Marin Schoolteacher Miss Parella Addresses the Nation
By Dewey Livingston
Marin County has long history of appearances in the national news — from the Marconi Wireless innovations of 1914 to Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point Fourth Grade Class song “Mill Valley” in 1970 to everything about Robin Williams — but few are aware of the national radio address given by local school teacher Theresa Parella in 1942. Not only was it a great honor for Marin, but also the school chosen was not in San Rafael or Sausalito, but rather a tiny, one-room schoolhouse on one of the most isolated and windy spots on Point Reyes.
Pierce District School opened in 1878 on the famed Pierce dairy ranch on Tomales Point. Lack of nearby students in the late 1920s led to its move a few miles south, to the Shafter Estate’s K Ranch overlooking Tomales Bay. A new schoolhouse welcomed pupils from families residing on the surrounding dairy ranches (including Irish dairymen McClure, Kehoe and Hendren); Italian artichoke farms (Simondi); and Coast Miwok families including Pensotti, Pozzi and Campigli. The school had large windows for light, a blackboard, and a wood (and sometimes coal) stove for heat. A number of teachers came and went, and in 1939 a new graduate of the Normal School in San Francisco, Theresa Parella, took the job.
“It was out in the sticks, and also they were all dirt roads when I was there,” she recalled. Like most rural schools of the era, she taught all grades, put up with the pranksters in the class, and visited with a pupil’s family every month. Miss Parella boarded at the Kehoe ranch and went home to the East Bay for the weekends.
Two months after the country entered World War II, the National Education Association of the United States, based in Washington, D.C., held a nationwide radio broadcast to show the American people, in the words of public relations director Belmont Farley, “what the schools are doing to aid the war effort.” Farley wrote to Miss Parella to invite her to speak, representing a small rural school as a contrast to the other participant, a big city school on the East Coast. The Association asked that Miss Parella tell about “what the rural school on the opposite side of the continent is doing to help the nation in this crisis.”
“The NEA wrote me a letter and asked me if I would participate in a broadcast involving what a large school did to help the war effort,” she recalled almost eight decades later. “They wanted a very small school to see what they did, and I was to be the one to do the small school.”
Miss Parella accepted, understanding the compliment that she — a young teacher with less than three years in the classroom — would be asked to speak for rural schoolteachers around the country. She carefully prepared a typewritten speech, and drove to the Palace Hotel in San Francisco to deliver it from the Gold Ballroom.
Why Miss Parella, a relatively new teacher at such an obscure and remote school? The answer would be that she was highly intelligent and talented, with energy to do good and a love for the families she served. She had already gotten the attention of people in the higher echelons of California education. In April 1941, she received a letter from the chief of the state’s Division of Elementary Education praising her for “the fine work you are doing with your little group of children at the Pierce School.” The letter continued, “It will be a long time before I forget the picture of the group engaged in working on their vegetable garden. I enjoyed the fine evidence of a progressive program within your classroom.”
At precisely 7:15 on the evening of February 21, 1942, the program commenced on radios tuned to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) around the nation. The announcer began, “The Schools go to war! …The attention of these educators is focused upon what the schools can do to help win the war.” The featured speaker, Dr. Alexander J. Stoddard, spoke of all schools’ “one main purpose” — cooperation in the war effort. A teacher from the East Coast, Thomas A. Van Sant of Baltimore, spoke of vocational training to prepare students for being at war, whether it be vocational training for industry or being prepared for air raids. “By the first of April,” he said, “there will be a trained air raid warden on every floor of every public school building in the city of Baltimore.”
Miss Parella’s situation was very much different. “Pierce is in a dairy section of Marin County. The schoolhouse is on a hillside in the open country, a mile from the Pacific Ocean, and incidentally, in a prohibited area. The average number of pupils attending is seven, and at present there is only one girl.” She continued:
Some people may wonder what such a small school can do, and if what it can do is worthwhile. We think we can help, and feel that however small our contributions may be, taken together, they are important. We’ve planned our campaign to help win the war and the peace. We are pooling home and school resources.
Indeed, the students at Pierce School were working hard for the war effort. The six boys in the class took care of calves that would become milk cows to provide milk products, and the student body began to grow barley, oats and vetch on the small school grounds. They expanded the vegetable garden to 22 by 80 feet in size, and registered it with the Victory Gardens Committee of the Marin County Civilian Defense group. The school also became a unit of the Junior Red Cross.
Exercising “thrift and industry,” the pupils purchased Defense Stamps, and one child, Miss Parella told the nation, “is voluntarily withdrawing from his savings, an amount sufficient to buy a [War] Bond.” The children focused on personal health and fitness. “Each one is eating the proper foods at home and at school, without protest — even spinach. Nutrition and vitamins are transformed from words to weapons.” They made sure to get enough sleep — “even if he does miss a favorite radio program.”
Eliminating waste was a priority, and also recycling. The kids salvaged iron, copper and tin, and conserved rubber:
Two boys are riding a horse to and from school to save rubber and fuel, and, perhaps, the need for replacement of car parts. They computed the number of miles per month the family car would be operated for this purpose and it was found to be two hundred and forty miles — and that’s a lot of rubber!
Miss Parella then provided a list of what her tiny school was doing for the war effort, including raising food, being healthy, investing in stamps and bonds, salvaging metal and saving supplies and feed sacks, “Making what we have last longer” and “Repairing everything that we can,” and, finally, “being on the alert for additional ways of helping.” She closed with a quote prepared by her pupils: “If everyone works at doing his share, we will win the war.”
The radio broadcast inspired listeners across the country. A Marin County school bulletin noted that many letters asking for more information about Marin’s schools “have come from school superintendents and principals of Kansas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and other eastern states.” The U. S. Office of Education requested a copy of her speech for publication and nationwide distribution. Not only that, “I got fan mail from different people who listened to the broadcast,” she remembered 77 years later.
As students around the country did what they could to support the country, schools suffered. Teachers were called to duty, or took higher-paying jobs in the defense industry. Half a year after Theresa Parella’s speech, an estimated 100,000 teachers around the country — about ten percent —had left the schoolroom, to the detriment of public education.
Miss Parella moved on at the end of that term, but continued teaching for decades. The historic Pierce District School lasted another year, closing for good in 1943 with only three students and a shortage of teachers. The schoolhouse eventually became a residence, and burned down in 1971. Only memories swirl around the place today: one, of a February evening in wartime, still flies through the airwaves of history.
