In the spring of 1967 the Arbon elementary school had two rooms, two teachers and twenty pupils, from one kindergartner to three eighth graders. On May 22 the Idaho State Journal gave the school a short article and a photograph on its page of eastern Idaho news, naming every child by grade. The next day it printed a second photograph, of the two teachers looking over a history of the valley that their pupils had started to gather.
The teachers appear in the paper only under their husbands' names. Mrs. Ivan Biggs taught the four upper grades, five through eight, in one room, and Mrs. Gene A. Stewart taught kindergarten and the first three grades in the other. The list skips from third grade to fifth, because no child was in the fourth grade that year. The roster, as the Journal printed it:
- Kindergarten: Gregory Gene Stewart
- First grade: Randy Nelson, Joyce Turner, Kenneth Gibbons, Davy Nuckols, Todd Chandler
- Second grade: Shane Chandler
- Third grade: Becky Jo Nelson, Gary Turner
- Fifth grade: Bruce Bradley, Bruce Dee Krueger, Elaine Turner
- Sixth grade: Kurtis Nelson, Pam Estep, Frank Johnson
- Seventh grade: Vickie Nelson, David Lusk
- Eighth grade: Jerre Lee Evans, Brad Ward Williams, Richard S. Biggs
What made the year's graduation news was that it would include everyone. Diplomas were going only to the three boys in the eighth grade, yet the program ahead of them belonged to all twenty children, who would recite, read and sing for the audience in the school basement before the ceremony. The paper's photograph was taken at a rehearsal. It shows Richard Biggs taking a dummy diploma from Greg Stewart, the school's only kindergartner, with the other two graduates, Brad Ward Williams and Jerre Evans, also in the shot. The paper did not give the date of the program, and it did not say whether Greg Stewart and Richard Biggs were the teachers' own sons.
The history project
On May 23 the Journal ran a photograph of the two teachers (the caption spelled Mrs. Stewart's name Steward) looking over a history the children had taken on during the 1966–67 year. Their aim was a little book about the valley's past, finished before the 1967–68 school year let out. The first step was gathering old photographs of the school; next the pupils meant to collect stories of Arbon's history and do the writing themselves.
Whether they finished it, the papers we have read do not say, and no copy is known to this site. Arbon children had written for the papers before: in 1923 and 1924 the pupils of the valley's country schools sent their own news to the American Falls Press. The valley's history did reach print in 1982 in the book Bannock Valley, but nothing we have found connects that book to the school's project of 1967.
The graduates
Two of the three eighth graders can be placed in valley families. Jerre Lee Evans was the youngest son of Waldo and Jean Daniels Evans, who farmed and kept the store near the Pauline crossroads; the Journal had named him, at nine, among their four boys in 1963. Brad Ward Williams was almost certainly a son of Sod and Nelda Ward Williams, the Arbon ranching family known in the horse-show and rodeo arenas of Utah. In 1970 the Journal named Brad, then 16, as a son of Mr. and Mrs. D. T. "Sod" Williams, in an article reporting that Mrs. Williams, after two Swiss residents wrote to her, had written a history of Arbon, Idaho, for a newspaper in Arbon, Switzerland. The papers do not say who Richard S. Biggs's parents were.
The class photograph
This site has a photograph of the school for the same year, shared by Dan Nuckols and Pam Estep Christensen. Its caption names sixteen of the children and leaves four unknown: two marked "? Nelson" and two left blank. The Journal's roster supplies the four missing names, Randy Nelson, Becky Jo Nelson, Todd Chandler and Shane Chandler, so the two Nelsons are probably Randy and Becky Jo and the blanks probably the two Chandler boys, though the paper cannot tell us which face is which. The caption also spells some names differently from the paper: Briggs for Biggs, Jerry for Jerre, Curtis for Kurtis.
The school stayed small. By 1980, the Journal noted, the whole Arbon School District counted just 15 students.
On this site: School class, 1966–1967, Schools of Arbon Valley, Waldo Evans, Sod Williams and his family in the arena, When Arbon Valley schoolchildren wrote the news, 1923–24, Lila Wade, teacher in Arbon's one-room schools and the church farm taxes that put the Arbon school at risk in 1982.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, May 22, 1967, page 3. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Datelined Arbon, the report's news was that every pupil at the elementary school would have a part in the spring 1967 graduation, something the school had not done before. Only three boys were finishing the eighth grade and would receive diplomas: Richard S. Biggs, Jerre Lee Evans and Brad Ward Williams.
That account came from the school's two teachers, Mrs. Ivan Biggs and Mrs. Gene A. Stewart, who between them taught the whole school. Everything was to happen downstairs, in the school basement. Before any diploma changed hands, the children were to perform: group numbers, readings, recited poems and songs.
The school had two rooms and twenty pupils in all. Mrs. Biggs took the upper grades, five through eight, and Mrs. Stewart the younger children from kindergarten through grade three. Gregory Gene Stewart was the school's one kindergartner, and his year was a part-time one: half days, three days a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday).
The article then went through the school grade by grade. Five children made up the first grade, its biggest class, while the second grade was a single child. The third and seventh grades counted two apiece, the fifth and sixth three apiece, and the eighth was the three graduates. Nobody at all was enrolled in grade four that spring. Every child was named.
The paper also ran a picture from a practice run of the ceremony. Richard Biggs is shown receiving a make-believe diploma from the kindergartner, Greg Stewart, and the class's other two members, Brad Ward Williams and Jerre Evans, are pictured as well.