POST WAR
there were about 1,000 children in the first
six grades.”
In the 1950s, many girls wore crinolines
under their skirts, which made the school
hallways even more crowded when students
taught physical education at the time.
“Out in the locker room it was so
crowded with all those crinolines, because
the girls had to wear uniforms for physical
education, that I put I bolts in the ceiling
and ran wires and took clothespins to
hang the crinolines up over our heads, so I
would have enough room to see what was
going on the locker room,” she said. “You
had seventh-graders through 12th-graders
in the locker room all the time. You could
just barely squeeze around in there.
“It was a sight in the hall when you had
all those crinoline skirts and girls holding
them as they walked down the hall,” she
said. “It was crowded. It was unbelievable.
At one time, it was so crowded that if you
had study hall and the weather was good,
you just went out and sat on the ground
outside.
“People were moving in to Vero like
crazy,” she said. “Every year they had to
search for teachers. Vero Beach was a wonderful
in Kentucky and Tennessee, where if your
60
were changing classes. Ouida Wyatt
town. It was not like small towns
#ET11000637 Downtown Vero Beach in 1951before beginning a post-war expansion in earnest.
grandfather wasn’t born there you were
an outsider. A lot of the stores in Vero gave
teachers 10 percent discounts. Ten percent
off shows you how badly they wanted
teachers and wanted to keep them.”
In the late 1950s, voters finally approved
a bond issue that financed the construction
of three new elementary schools in
Vero Beach — Rosewood, Beachland and
Osceola — and, in 1964, a more modern
high school. The high school was airconditioned,
but it took another decade
before cooling came to all of the county’s
public schools. F
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