Ethel Sloan Burke
By, 
Spencer Sherman, Holly Messamore, and Jeff Wood 

There were six people in Ethel Sloan's family. Her father John built a house out of cement blocks. All of the girls slept in one room. The oldest one was Irene, then Martha and Jessie, and finally Ethel. Ethel was born on October 8, 1922. Since she was living on the farm, it was hard for her to get to school on school days. Her farm was three-fourths of a mile away from school. There was no bus service in her town. In nice weather she walked to school and bad weather her dad took her to school and picked her up. 

During recess time she would play tag or some other game she liked. During her seventh grade year she was on a softball team. She went to school from nine o'clock in the morning to four o'clock in the afternoon. The seventh and eighth grade was in the high school. She kept her reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, history, and geography books in her desk, which was about two feet wide, much like the desks that children have today. They only had one teacher for all their subjects. She didn't have a favorite subject in school. She carried her lunch in a lunch basket. There was no hot lunch program, so everyone had to bring their lunch to school. In her seventh grade class there were no dances but when she got to high school there were some. In her school the kids mostly brought their lunch, which usually consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or sometimes mashed up pork and beans. She got about an hour break for lunch. In school there was a room for each grade. When she was about thirteen or fourteen she liked to read Nancy Drew. While she was reading, boys would sometimes dip her curls in inkwells and she would always slap them. After she got to school there were about eighteen kids in each classroom. Her best friend was a girl named Marjorie. 

On February the twelfth, they celebrated Lincoln's birthday by having a program. Lincoln's birthday was always special in her town. They would cut out his picture from the side view and paste it on black construction paper. Then they did the same thing with tablet paper to write the story of his life. They sang patriotic songs and the entire school would have a play. 

She lived on a farm so she had a lot of chores to do some of them were to go home, change clothes, and eat her mother's baked bread and then gather the eggs and help her dad. Every morning she had to get up around six o'clock to milk the cows. She and her 4 sisters had to make the beds, help set the table, help with the cooking, and help clean the house. Ma would do the washing and they would hang clothes on the line. When they were dry they would take them down and fold them. They would iron their clothes with flat irons. They would feed the chickens also. One thing they did for past time was to ride their horses in the pasture to bring the cows in. 

On Saturdays her dad always promised to take her for ice cream. Ethel would always get vanilla ice cream. In her life many amazing things happened.