"Old News is Sometimes Good News!" ** May 5, 1961 **

My mother recently sent me this newspaper article that she had saved since 1961.  When I was in 7th grade at Argentine Jr., Sr. High School, our Homemaking class hosted a Tea for our mothers in May, and the theme was "Famous Mothers".  May J. McGuire, the "Lookin' Around" columnist for the The Kansas City Kansan newspaper was a special guest at our tea.  Her article compliments our serving table, good manners, and appearance.  She writes that I had introduced her to my mother at the tea, but they had actually met years before through an organization known as The Naturalization Council of Kansas City, Kansas.  This group was founded in 1946 as a tool to help foreign born citizens adapt to the American way of life.  Many of these war brides were from China, Japan, Korea, India, Ecuador and Germany.  The Council's specific focus was to help them to achieve a speaking knowledge of English, and obtain a reasonable understanding of our democratic form of government,  national, state and local.  They also offered classes in English and other social skills.  The Council would give a Christmas party and a Tea every year for these families and their children.  Ms. McGuire interviewed my mother, who was born and raised in India in a later column in February of 1963, and mentioned that since my mother had been educated in an English school in India, she did not have quite the language barrier as those who did not speak English well.  My mother told Ms. McGuire that if it hadn't been for the goodness of the founder of the Council, Mrs. Mary Parker, she might have gone back to India.  They encouraged my mother to take secretarial courses, thus enabling her to obtain employment.  The Council did make my mother feel at home here, through their fellowship and encouragement.

And now, back to our tea for our Famous Mothers!  Ms. McGuire spoke very highly of us girls in her column.  We served punch, cakes and nuts.  We used a lace tablecloth with an "exquisite" arrangement of lilacs, jonquils and tulips on the table.  Each guest was registered and received a name tag.

A bulletin board was on display with pictures of babies showing different emotions, laughing, crying, etc.  Our main course of study in this class was caring for, feeding and nurturing babies.  Our classmate Janelle Perkins co-ordinated this bulletin board and Ms. McGuire said it was "very clever".  Connie Riley, who was the refreshment chairperson, is also credited with having the original idea for the tea.  Mary Howser was chairman for invitations, Linda Smith for the name tags, and Suzanne Berry was hostess chairman.

And by the way, our teacher for this class was Miss Anne Long!

I apologize for the small, kinda hard-to-read article.  I tried to make it bigger and easy for 60+ year old eyes to read!!!  But I am proud my mother had saved it so we can enjoy it now!

  Thanks Mom for the GREAT OLD NEWS!