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Martha LaFrenz Kay"Murt" 1956 Class Valedictorian Spectator Business Manager 56; Pep Club Vice-President 55; Vocal Officer 55; Junior Play 54; National Honor Society 55. |
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Martha LaFrenz Kay"Murt" 1956 Class Valedictorian Spectator Business Manager 56; Pep Club Vice-President 55; Vocal Officer 55; Junior Play 54; National Honor Society 55. |
2006
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Where to start? On Arthur Street, where I grew up and where I met Nancy Berry, about five years old. Oh, I could never skate or hit a ball as well as she could. One Halloween we put on our costumes and went out to trick-or-treat. When one lady answered our knock and said she didn’t have any treats for us, Nancy thought that meant she had to do a trick. So she stood on her head. |
Or I could start at the grade school, where China Slaughter, always smiling, directed morning traffic and where I always wanted to be a patrol girl. We girls loved our fourth grade teacher so much that we pooled our money and bought her a model horse. She pretended to be thrilled.
We had no junior high schools or middle schools in those Dark Ages, so we went from elementary to Liberty High School. I’d better start there. Despite my fear of Mrs. Henderson, I followed Sharon Rotsch’s example and began to devour the books in the library. I took just enough math with Mom, Mrs. LaFrenz to the rest of you, to learn that I had no future in that area. I flirted with chemistry mostly to please Mr. Holt. Mrs. Williams had the courage to challenge her senior English students to write the senior play. After Diane Igoe, Bill Sterling, and Mike “hizzoner” Maloney and I wrote “Diamonds, Daggers, and Dolls,” Mrs. Williams put it on the boards, and I was hooked on English from then on.
My extra-curricular memories of LHS focus mostly on Nancy Berry, Sharon Rotsch, and Diane Igoe. We drove around in our father’s cars, smoking cigarettes and harmonizing (sort of) on “You Are my Sunshine.” We wanted to be “bad” but didn’t know how.
Let’s see now. Editor-in-chief of this publication, Diane Igoe Mnookin, says I may have one page to review my life, and I’ve covered half a page in adolescent memories. I’ll have to give a condensed version of my adult life. Arrested development?
I attended William Jewell College along with many LHS graduates and had a happy time there in the English Department. I did my graduate work at the University of Illinois since it was near my new home in Danville, Il, where I married Bob Kay and began my family and career. Two wonderful daughters and eventually six grandchildren. My teaching career spanned thirty-five years at junior high, high school but mostly community college. I wouldn’t change any of it except maybe all those Sunday evenings grading papers.
Retirement in 1997 brought me travel opportunities and time for our grandchildren. I still teach a class in Shakespeare and am co-authoring a local history book on the emergence of Danville women into public life at the turn of the previous century.
My dear mother, your favorite math teacher, parted this life on February 9, 2006, at the age of 102. Thanks to many of you, including class president Thom Weddle, who attended her funeral at Second Baptist. Her last message to the Class of 1956 was that she remembered only the good things about us.
