Students from Myrtle Green's third-grade class at Salem School are seen in this 1921 class picture. (Courtesy photograph)

Myrtle Green left mark on two generations of students

Even after decades, there are some teachers who live on in memories of once young, impressionable students. They remember that special instructor who stood before them in a classroom, and think, "Yes, that person gave me direction and helped shaped me into the person I became." Mrs. Green was such a teacher.

"She was a good teacher and she made you study which I didn't like but that's what I needed," said Jim Boyd, 85, of Lodi. Boyd was in Mrs. Green's fifth-grade class at Lincoln School in the mid-1930s.

"She made me memorize the Gettysburg Address all by heart," he recalled with a chuckle. He said Mrs. Green and the school janitor were his best friends at Lincoln School. "I remember her more than other teachers."

Myrtle A. McCall was born on May 11, 1864 in Ohio. Five years later, the transcontinental railroad was completed in the summer of 1869, and that meant people no longer had to endure the long and dangerous six-month covered-wagon journey it once took to travel west across the country. J. M. McCall, Myrtle's father, may have started thinking then about relocating his family and starting a new life in the west.

In 1871, McCall packed up the family including seven-year-old Myrtle, left their Ohio home and went to California. They settled in Lockeford, where McCall worked as a teacher at Lockeford School.

After one year there, McCall moved to Lodi, where he took the job as teacher of the one-room Salem School. Lodi was only three-years-old in 1872 and had one school. In 1874, a new two-room Salem School building was erected along today's Lodi Avenue at Stockton Street. McCall was the first principal of the school in this building.

In 1875, McCall again moved the family and this time settled in Stockton. Myrtle McCall graduated from Stockton High School in June 1881. Like her father, she turned to teaching as a profession. She was 18 when she began teaching at Alpine School on Alpine Road, about a mile north of Kettleman Lane east of Lodi. She taught there for two years.

On Aug. 25, 1884, she married Watson C. Green, a prominent attorney in Lodi. As was the practice in those days and into the 20th century, married women were not hired as teachers. Once a female teacher married, her teaching days were over. The Greens set up their home on the northwest corner of Pine and Church streets.

They had one child, a son named Homer W. Green, on Oct. 8, 1888. Before Homer reached the age of 11, however, his father was gone. Watson Green died on June 24, 1899, leaving 35-year-old Myrtle Green to raise their son on her own.

After her husband's death, Myrtle Green re-entered the teaching profession in 1900. She dedicated the next 38 years of her life to teaching. She spent one year teaching in Fair Oaks district in Sacramento and one year teaching at Tacoma, Washington, where she went to accompany her son while he was in army training at Camp Lewis. Homer Green eventually served in World War I with the 91st division. With the exception of those two years, Myrtle Green spent all her teaching years in Lodi at Salem School, where her father taught many years earlier, and later at Lincoln and Emerson schools.

In April 1937, Mrs. Green experienced more sadness when her only child, Homer, died. In March 1938, she attended a special American Legion ceremony to plant and dedicate a tree in memory of Homer Green at Lawrence Park. Also that year, Mrs. Green retired from teaching at the age of 74.

Some time after her retirement, an article on her was featured in a local teachers association newsletter. In recalling the early days of teaching, she described how final grades were published with the children's name in the local newspaper for all to see. Grades began as numbers, then proceeded to descending grades of E, G, F and P to be replaced later by the new rating of A, B, C, D and F.

Mrs. Green remembered the primary grades' minstrel show held in the Lodi Theater to raise money to buy a piano for Salem School. She recalled other school programs like the performances to stimulate the sale of Liberty bonds during World War I and the school marches during Memorial Day and later Armistice Day observances.

Mrs. Green evidently was well respected for her mastery at teaching the children to do the marches and flag drills. Emerson School's Parent Teacher Association wrote this introduction about her:

"When we want a patriotic pageant with a peck of spirit in it,

When we want some martial music with a rhythm to begin it,

When we want to see Old Glory give your heart a real, real thrill

Get Mrs. Green to manage it, she'll give a first-class drill."

Mrs. Green passed away in January 1950 at the age of 85. Her obituary, published Jan. 10, 1950, said she was "loved and revered by two generations of Lodians."

"Mrs. Green delighted in meeting her former pupils and recalling earlier days, and it was only recently that friends have missed seeing her downtown."

Vintage Lodi is a local history column that appears on the first and third Saturday of the month.