Audio recording clip of interview with Shirley Edmond by Claytee D. White, June 24, 2010

Tell me about going to school as a young girl. Any memories of the Westside School? Oh, yes. I went to kindergarten and first grade. I skipped second grade I believe and went to third grade. Then from there I went to Madison, which is Wendell P. But, yeah, I remember kindergarten. Ms. Welch was my teacher. I believe she was the daughter of Ms. French, who was the principal, I believe if memory serves me correct. But, yeah. At that time, though, for some reason they wanted us to have high kindergarten, low kindergarten, high first and low first. What does that mean? To me it just meant that you'd be spending two years in the same grade. And I don't know if that's why they skipped us. I believe my whole class, we didn't go to the second grade. We went from first to third. But they were doing that. Why they did it, I don't know. But I specifically remember that because my parents were saying I would be 19 years old trying to get out, you know. But they discontinued it. I don't know. They might have discontinued it the year that they skipped us, skipped a grade. But I remember Ms. Mabel Hoggard. I believe she was my third grade teacher. Yeah. I remember she used to dress so well and she had such a dignified manner about her. It kind of 5 made me want to be a schoolteacher. My teachers really kind of inspired me as far as education. I remember when I was coming up most of the teachers, especially in West Las Vegas, they tried to instill in us that we could be somebody, we could do something. They would come dressed nicely. So we just thought that a teacher was really something to be. I remember Mr. Don Kirkland. He taught at — well, I keep calling it Madison, but it's Wendell P. Williams Elementary School. He would tutor us after school in math, try to help us. I also remember a teacher Ms. Jean Sexsmith was her name. She was a Caucasian lady. But she would pick some of us up from the school on a Saturday and take us to her house. I remember she'd serve us milk and cookies. And she would tutor us, too, in reading and things like that. Yeah. Claudette, it was Nichols, Enus is her name now. We went to Rancho together. I went to Rancho two years. When they built Western I went to Western. I was in the first graduating class from Western. So from kindergarten to tenth grade she and my friend Georgia Ealy ~ she married a Maynard and then she married a Lanford. But she was tragically murdered here, I think in the 80s. But the three of us, they called us "The Three Musketeers" because we hung together. We would visit each other. We would walk from each other's homes and hung together at school. So they called us "the Three Musketeers." Did you walk back and forth to school? Yes. Yes. I lived on Jackson. And Georgia's family moved in Berkley Square when they built it. Claudette's family, her mom and dad still live on D Street right at Harrison I think. I think it's right near Harrison. (Woodrow Wilson, our first black assemblyman or commissioner, was Claudette's uncle.) But we always walked to school together. And I remember the boys would chase us home from school every day. Why, I don't know. This is from Westside School, because if we stopped running, they would stop running. But they would chase us. Mr. Spakes, I think was his name, he had a store, a candy store. We'd run from Westside School to his candy store. We'd get our candy and then we'd take off running again. Why they did it, I don't know.