Birthday buddies: Teacher, student celebrate 75-year friendship

As a young child, Garnet Overly recalls, she always looked forward to school.

“Schooling was something I always enjoyed. I enjoyed going to school and I enjoyed my teachers I had in the lower grades. Right now don’t ask me their names,” says Overly, 94, of Donegal Township.

“I remember thinking, in third grade, ‘It might be nice to be a teacher.’ I never thought I would become one,” she says.

Overly grew up in a big family on a farm.

“With 10 children, you know you are not going to send anybody to college,” she says.

Life can be funny, as Overly says.

At the age of 18, having recently graduated from high school, she was asked to fill in for a teacher at a nearby one-room schoolhouse a few days a week.

When a teacher fell ill at another school, she filled in again.

The following fall, she says, the night before school was to begin, she received a call asking if she could teach. On short notice, she began a 40-year career she never anticipated, and found a lifelong friendship in her classroom.

Celebrating birthdays

Wilma Mowry, 80, of Cook Township began first grade in the fall of 1944 in the one-room schoolhouse on Hellein School Road in Acme. Overly was her first teacher.

Overly discovered Mowry’s birthday, Dec. 9, was one day before her own on Dec. 10.

“She brought me a piece of cake. It was chocolate ice cream cake. I thought that was the cat’s meow,” Mowry says, laughing.

“I think it was because our birthdays were so close together. I thought I should have someone to celebrate my birthday with, and whoever’s birthday was closest to mine, I would take a piece of cake,” Overly recalls.

Her sweet gift began an ongoing 75-year tradition, with teacher and student celebrating with a birthday lunch together each year.

“They haven’t missed a year,” says Mowry’s daughter, Barbara Craig.

Overly and Mowry soon moved on to other schools. They attended the same church, and Overly and Mowry’s mother were friends, so they remained in each others lives.

Lacking a degree, and eventually marrying and starting a family, Overly thought her teaching career was over in the late 1940s.

She began taking classes at then-Indiana State College, earning her bachelor’s degree from then-California State College in 1960, four years after being called back to the classroom.

“I worked my way through,” she says.

She went on to teach second grade in the Mt. Pleasant Area School District, a grade and age she particularly enjoyed.

“I was there when (students) had their teeth, lost their teeth and grew new ones,” Overly says, smiling.

She retired in 1994.

Learning together

The women have fond memories of their early school years, one a teacher, one a student.

“When we were in the one-room schoolhouse and had recess, we played ball. I was the teacher and I was the pitcher. We had fun,” Overly says.

She also remembers a young boy who, on his way to the outhouse one January morning, slipped and fell, becoming soaked in the ice and water.

With no phone to call anyone to bring him a change of clothes, Overly handed over her own coat and hung his sopping clothes around the school’s pot-bellied stove to dry.

Mowry’s memory of outhouses includes the use of catalog pages for bathroom tissue.

She also recalls driving a truck around her family farm at age 12 to milk cows before and after school.

Two days after her first school driving lesson, she says, she passed her driving test.

She traveled to Mt. Pleasant in high school, encountering a bit of “town versus country” attitude. It didn’t faze her, she says, and she played several sports and joined the band.

She went on to have a career in catering, and lead a troop of Girl Scouts. She recently gave up line dancing, but still enjoys woodworking.

These days the friends stay in touch mostly by phone, but the birthday get together is a given.

“We always try to beat the snow,” Mowry says.

She remembers one childhood birthday when Overly crocheted her a pair of pink slippers.

“I was skating all over the (hardwood) floor,” she says, laughing.

This year she gave Overly an angel pin as a gift, and received a crocheted tea towel and potholder in return.

“She does beautiful crochet work,” Mowry says of Overly.

They most recently celebrated their birthdays at Brady’s Restaurant in Acme.

And, as in life, sometimes the pupil becomes the teacher.

“I said I was thinking about ordering French toast. She told me, ‘That’s breakfast, not lunch,’ ” Mowry says.

“Then she said, ‘That sounds pretty good,’ and ordered the same,” she says, laughing.