Now and Then - Claude Lindsey, our long-time school janitor

— I think Claude Lindsey became the janitor for Pea Ridge School in the mid-1940s, about the time I started in first grade.

During the years that followed, the school building was enlarged, school principals changed many times, teachers and office personnel came and went;

but Claude Lindsey was an enduring, every day presence at the school.

I don’t know just when he left his post as janitor, possibly around 1960. As I remember my school days, Claude was always there.

I graduated in 1957, and I’m pretty sure he was still janitor then, tending the heating system, ringing the school bell, mopping floors, making repairs and keeping things in order.

A few days ago I was talking with Janice Bray about this, and she says she even remembers the fragrance of Claude’s wide oil mops as he cleaned the hallways at school.

Claude Lindsey was very quiet and soft-spoken, and never called much attention to himself.

But as I have had opportunity to think back about things, he was one of those people in our lives who worked mostly behind the scenes and without much recognition, but who was always therefor our benefit. He rarely missed work, and he was part of the steadiness of our experience of school days. Part of his job was to pace the school day, ringing the bell to call school into session, sound out our lunch break, ring in the afternoon session, and dismiss us at day’s end. I remember being in the old auditorium study hall, as a school day wore long, and what a jubilation we felt when we saw Claude coming in, wearing his blue overalls and long-sleeved shirt, reaching up to pull the old bell rope. With that old bell he made the finest music as the school day closed. A good school bell, well rung, stirs your heart, recharges your batteries, clears your tiredness and fires up your zest for life!

Since Claude was not a big talker, many of us probably went all through 12 years of school without ever having a conversation with him, other than a good morning or a “How are you doing today?” He was a pleasant man, but usually only engaged in conversation if you sought him out and asked questions. Apparently at times, Claude stayed at the school, keeping a cot for sleeping in a storage room near the library, or in a small room back of the lunch room. I expect sometimes in the wintertimes he could have been found in the dark of night, carrying out the cinders and coal ash, and stoking the furnace for tomorrow’s school day. John Easley remembers that in the ’30s Claude drove a 1928 Chevy Coupe with spokeless, solid disk wheels. As a lover of vintage cars, I would loved to have seen that car. My dad used to have a wire-spoke wheel coupe from about 1932.

During the war years, 1941 to 1945, Claude was employed by John and Maxine Black, who lived then in the house two doors south of the funeral home in Pea Ridge. The house was known then as the Watson house, after Maxine’s family. When John Black entered the armed services during World War II, he employed Claude to keep up the place, work the garden, maintain the house and lawn, and handle errands for the family.

Claude lived in a small house on the property, behind the family home. After World War II, in 1946, John and Maxine Black and their boys Eddie and Gary moved to Bentonville, but for several years Claude continued living on the property and taking care of the place for the Blacks. Many Pea Ridgers will remember John Black as the Benton County sheriff in the mid-1950s, and Gary Black as our recent county judge.

The new Little Sugar Creek bridge on Arkansas Highway 72 is named for John Black. Eddie Black, who now lives between Pea Ridge and Bentonville, remembers going to school at Pea Ridge in first and second grade, and how his family not only relied on Claude, but sought to see after him through the years. Eddie also remembers as a teenager working through a summer with Claude, painting all our school rooms, cleaning windows, refinishing floors and so on. In his later years, after the Blacks sold the house in Pea Ridge, Claude lived between Pea Ridge and Rogers in a small house on the Wayne Buttry property, just south of Brush Creek on Arkansas Highway 94.

Claude passed away in February 1965 at age 65, and is buried at Pea Ridge Cemetery. Although I never knew of his family, I learned with the help of the funeral record that he was born in 1899 at Bonham, Texas; that he had a brother Henry in Lowell, Ark.; and also five sisters: Anna Belle in Oregon, and Gertrude, Alene, Louella, and Mildred in Texas. I have to admit that I never fully appreciated Claude back when I could have said a “thank you.” Thinking back now on the years he gave us, toiling out of sight down in the furnace room and elsewhere around the school buildings, I remember Claude with the bright sounds of his school bell ringing in my head.

Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history and vice-president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society.

He can be contacted by email at joe369@centurytel net, or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 02/03/2010