Joan Thomas top center with her 4th Grade Class at MattieV (now known as the Mattie V. Rutherford Middle School Alternative Education Center). The school was/is named for Mattie V. Rutherford who was principal for 34 years. She was principal when my Mother and later her sister Barbara Thomas first went there as a first graders. It seems there was a custom in those days that on the last day of school each student could bring a child who would be starting to school the following year -- introducing them to the school. So a neighbor at DancyT brought my Mother to school and all was extremely well until my Mother saw Mrs. Mattie V. Rutherford, the Principal of some 34 years, talking to a child with a broken arm in a cast. Somehow, my Mother thought that Mrs. Rutherford had broken the child's arm and that was very scarey for her at the time. Mother remembers that Mrs. Rutherford was VERY strict. A Little Story: I mentioned to my Mother recently that I had learned from jacksonville.com that Mattie V. Rutherford had been laid to rest in the Evergreen Cemetery. Mother told me how the teachers at 10th and Market Elementary School (later, Corrine Scott School and more recently, condos), where she and her sister, Barbara had been temporarily transfered, walked the children in a line south to MattieV School at 5th and Hubbard to say goodbye to their former Principal. The casket was placed in the school auditorium and the children walked by it. My Mother remembers this as a wonderful thing that was done for all the children and teachers who had known Mrs. MattieV. Joan Thomas taught 4th Grade on the second floor 5th Street side of MattieV in the early 1940's and then again in the later 1940's.

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