Becoming the most distinguished alumnus of the Nome Public Schools, General James H. Doolittle, who had spent his first six school years in Nome, led his Army Air Corps bombers in an aerial assault on Tokyo, April 18, 1942, from an aircraft carrier. Three of his schoolmates, among those still living in Nome, who recalled memories of young Jimmy Doolittle, were Guy Boyd, Cappy McDougal, and Bud Lehmann.⁹

Good schools are a compound of several tangible and many intangible ingredients, but the most important of these has always been effective teachers. While teacher replacement has been characteristically high in the Nome schools, two great teachers, Emma Stubjaer Cameron and Olaf Halverson, are among those whose long contributions to the community life have been immeasurable in human values. At a farewell dinner in honor of Mrs. Cameron and her husband, Bill, in 1966, Carrie McLain made the following remarks:

To her colleagues, Mrs. Cameron’s talents and energy seemed boundless. She taught French and Latin, sponsoring a Junior Classical League whose annual banquets were resplendent affairs in the style of Roman antiquity, and the official language was Latin, often spoken with a distinguishable Eskimo accent. "Stuby" ran the library, where she actively assisted students in selecting books, advised on the preparation of reports, and trained her own student librarians. After school she directed student casts in the many plays she produced. Stubby was a professional teacher in the collective sense, as well; a continuous supporter of the broad aims of education through active membership in the National Education Association and its state and local affiliates, the Alaska Education Association and the Nome Education Association. Emma Cameron’s standards of scholarship were directed toward the pursuit of excellence, in which she was indefatiguable in her efforts to encourage the individual student to strive toward his potential. Her fire of dedication burned unwaveringly, and she touched its kindling power to the lamp of knowledge that each growing child holds invisibly for an able teacher to fill and light.

Elementary and junior high teachers with tenures exceeding ten years, in the nineteen forties and fifties, were Helen Bockman, Omie McCarthy, Lennie May Nerland, Helen Dunbar, Ann Gillis, and Mary Ellen Walsh. High school teachers of this distinguished group included William Henry Ullrich, who received his early education in the Nome schools, Emma Cameron, Olaf Halverson, and Superintendent William L. Angell.¹⁰ The long service of these able teachers provided a center of stability beneficial to the hundreds of children to whom they became identified with the life of the school and were known familiarly by whole families of students.

As the school enrollments increased, teachers were called upon to do yeoman service in clerical assistance to the administrator.¹¹ Superintendent A. A. Ryan, whose complaints were couched in direct reportive terms, mentioned in his 1940 Report to the Commissioner of Education that the superintendent did all his own clerical work. The total enrollment that year was 161. Eighteen years later, in the 1958 school year, when the school board had been increased to five members and the student enrollment had burgeoned to 700, Superintendent William Angell was given the assistance of the first office clerk to be employed in the schools.¹² The absence of office help undoubtedly was a source of inefficiency not only to the superintendent, but to the elementary and high school principals, all of whom doubled as teachers of at least one class daily in a tightly structured school economy.¹³

Soon after the formation of the Territorial Department of Education, Commissioner L. D. Henderson devised an examination for the certification of teachers, and toured the schools of northwestern Alaska to make a personal inspection and to examine applicants. He gave two examinations for teacher certification at Nome, in August 1917.¹⁴

He reported on salaries of teachers:

Teachers’ salaries, other than those of the superintendents and principals, between 1918-19 and 1938-39, for the Nome schools elementary staff ranged from a minimum average of $1440 to a maximum average of $1698.75; and for high school teachers the figures ranged between $1665 and $1800, representing a drop, rather than an increase, of $101.25 between 1921 and 1939. In the same overall period, administrators were paid from $2025 to $2900.¹⁶ These salary scales had evolved from the beginning of the local school system, with adjustments to conform to approved budget amounts over the years, and had become stabilized to an essential degree, although the superintendent’s salary was negotiated.

In the early years of his administration, Commissioner Henderson had proposed a plan of minimum salaries for teachers by geographic areas, taking into account the widely varying costs of living, travel expense, and remoteness. In his 1920 report, the Commissioner offered a minimum salary schedule and expressed hope that local school boards would adopt it.¹⁷ The seed bore fruit in the 1939 session of the Legislature, when an important basic school support act was passed to provide equalized minimum salaries, by judicial divisions, for all classroom teachers. Commissioner of Education, Anthony E. Karnes commented on the law:

However, the act was a foundation for a pragmatic and equitable system of salary adjustments that proved to be fruitful in elevating professional standards of education in years to come. The minimum salary scale of $2100 per annum for both high school and grade school teachers of the Second Judicial Division increased the salaries of the Nome school faculty by approximately $400 and $500 in the high school and grade school, respectively.¹⁹

A series of education bills in successive legislatures were supported by able commissioners of education, James C. Ryan and Don M. Dafoe, in the two decades before statehood, under a strong territorial board of education whose members, under a reorganization act of 1933, were appointed by the Governor of the Territory for overlapping terms of five years. Besides the efficient territorial department, a vigorous revival of the Alaska Education Association in the war years added the strength of an increasingly powerful teacher organization to the forces working for higher educational standards in Alaska.²⁰

Improvements in the salary schedules provided minimum and maximum salaries, supported chiefly by the Territory, for teachers and administrators, with annual increments according to qualification. These schedules, together with annual sick leave provisions, and an actuarally sound retirement system, were developed and lobbied by the Alaska Education Association with a high degree of success. By 1958, the average annual salaries of Nome teachers had risen to $7077.22. For many years the Nome teachers enrolled with 100% membership in their local and territorial associations, as well as the parent National Education Association, taking an active part in the activities of these organizations, as they have continued to do with constructive effect following statehood.

Commissioner Karnes pointed out, in 1944, that "graduation from an approved university or college is the minimum requirement of training for high school teachers in Alaska, and at least three years of work in an accredited college or normal school is required for elementary teachers."²¹ In Nome, from 1919 to 1930, the ratio of college graduates on the faculty to normal school graduates was two to three, or 40% college graduates to 60% normal school graduates. By 1937, 87.5% of a faculty of 16 teachers held a college degree, and 12.5% were normal school graduates or did not hold a college degree,²² compared with a territorial average for other incorporated districts, in 1958, at the close of the territorial period, of slightly over 87% of degree holders.²³ Although supporting statistics are not at hand, it is probable that the Nome schools surpassed the territorial percentage in this respect in 1958, as the trend had continued upward. The fact remains that the Nome teaching staff anteceded the highest average degree of qualification attained by the sum total of territorial teachers by a period of five years. The difficulty has not been in employing well qualified teachers, but in keeping them through a stabilizing length of tenure. Associated with budgetary inadequacy, the erratic and excessive turnover of teachers is undoubtedly a cause of lowered achievement standards by the students.

With the amalgamation of the city schools and the Bureau of Indian Affairs school in 1946-47, and the following year, the student population rose from its 1944-45 figure of 163 total enrollment to 337 in 1948-49, more than doubling in a space of five years. By 1957-58, the school enrollment had again more than doubled to a figure of 700. The new school budgets spiraled from the $36,981.82 sum of 1945-46, (city share, $8,855.82) to an astronomical amount of $256,635 (city share, $80,763.74) in 1957-58. To a board and council accustomed to thinking conservatively in educational costs and reacting with shock to the 1945-46 city share of under $9000,²⁴ the developing situation was almost enough to induce a trauma. However, the firm guiding hand of Superintendent William L. Angell, from 1945 to statehood in 1959,²⁵ eased the local financing through federal assistance programs, and provided the administrative strength that times of change require.

As the enrollment skyrocketed, more space for classes became a pressing necessity. Commissioner Karnes had stated in his 1940 report that "ordinarily, cities are supposed to construct their own school buildings, but the last three legislatures have set a precedent in assisting cities in the construction of their school buildings…" In 1953, with a grant from the Legislature, a new elementary addition to the main school was built. The home economics and shop classes were moved into renovated army surplus yak-huts on adjoining grounds.²⁶

Sanitary conditions in the Nome schools had never been standard. The city existed in sewage and garbage disposal conditions that had prevailed in the gold-rush era. Water purchased from a tank trucking firm was pumped into water storage tanks in the residences and public and business buildings, and reordered periodically. Water drains from sinks and tubs emptied onto the ground to run off and evaporate, a system that would have caused endemic disease in a warmer climate. Toilets were indoor "honey buckets," usually vented, with an outside "port" for the scavenger’s contracted collections.²⁷ Shortly before statehood, the territorial health officer warned the city that if more than 500 children were housed in the city school building, sewer and water facilities meeting standard health requirements would have to be installed.²⁸ Although the standaards were never met by the school in the territorial era ending in 1958, the health department cancelled any further additions to the main building after 1962, pending the correction of sanitary conditions.²⁹

In spite of the negative aspects of the school facilities, a faithful corps of teachers remained to perform cadre duty with those newly coming in. One who came to stay, in 1946, Mr. Olaf Halverson, made his mark as a great teacher of the Nome youth. Mr. Halverson, a graduate of St. Olaf’s College, in Northfield, Minnesota, came to Alaska in 1935, as a surveyor with the Matanuska Valley colony project. He had formerly been a teacher and was proud of his record of having taught twenty years without a day’s absence or tardiness. Of Norwegian stock, Olaf was a master skier. He once astonished his students by chartering a ski plane to take him into the coastal range north of Nome, where he mounted his skiis and made a swift return down the valley slopes to town. Of a pleasant disposition, and radiating good will in his classroom, he made his mathematics, science, mechanical drawing, and shop classes popular. On Sundays, Mr. Halverson taught church school to a roomful of small children at the Swedish Evangelical Church. Among his teaching colleagues, Olaf collected the education association dues, which were customarily one hundred percent, and he wrote articles for The Alaska Teacher, as well, making him well known among the teachers of the Territory. He acted as high school principal in various years, and spent numerous hours assisting the clerkless superintendent with fiscal reports.³⁰

As school budget money was in short supply, Mr. Halverson underwrote a school yearbook, Polaris, which he served as advisor for the four years from 1947 to 1950. The Polaris is an excellent book of quality pictures, sound territorial and school history, and a valuable resource of information concerning the school years of publication. One of Mr. Halverson’s students, Loretta Snyder, a girl of native blood and valedictorian of the Class of 1948, concluded her graduation address, which was printed in the Polaris, with these words of pragmatic philosophy that characterized the attitudes of her teacher:

Loretta became a medical doctor.

When Mr. Halverson died in 1962, he left a bequest of $100 a year to be awarded as a scholarship to a worthy Nome High School graduate at the annual graduation exercises.³¹ Although Olaf was a bachelor, his affection and concern for the welfare of children was boundless. His popularity with them, which led to their naming a favorite skating pond "Halverson Lake," made a deep impression on the community memory. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the pupil of Plato, wrote a suitable epitaph for all great teachers:

Olaf Halverson was one of those who deserved that tribute.

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