Helen (Thonpson) Heckes, 1927

Young Helen Thompson arrived in Oysterville at the beginning of the school year in 1926.  Oysterville School, District #1 was to be her first teaching assignment.  Mrs. Dewit Stoner, clerk of  the Oysterville School Board, had met her at the train in Nahcotta and had helped her get settled at the little house a few blocks away from the one-room schoolhouse.

“It was the Captain Stream House,” Helen told me more than half a century later.  “It should have been perfect, but I was from Olympia — a city girl — and I had never lived alone before.  And never in the country where it was so dark at night and you could hear the coyotes howling!”

She stuck it out for a few weeks but. finally gathered her courage and went to see Mrs. Stoner.  “I think you’ll have to find someone else…” she began.  Mrs. Stoner (probably thinking about the difficulties in obtaining a teacher in out-of-the-way Oysterville) said, “give me a day or two and let me see what I can work out.”

Helen Thompson with Students, 1926

And so it was that Helen went to the Heckes Boarding House to live.  It was a busy, bustling place in the summers but in the winter was occupied just by Mr. and Mrs. Heckes and their big, handsome, and oh-so-shy son, Glen.  He was immediately smitten.

As time went by, Mr. Heckes decided to play matchmaker.  From the wooded near the barn across the street he gave a low wolf whistle just as Helen was on her way to the school one early morning — and just as Glen was leaving the house to go split wood for the schoolhouse stove.  One thing led to another and, eventually, Helen gave up teaching to marry Glen.  She’s the only person I know who was given a shivaree by the community.

Helen was not completely through with teaching however. In 1950 when her own children were teens, Helen returned to school, herself.  Prompted by the birth of a relative with special needs, Helen took classes to qualify as a special education teacher.  She developed a vocational-style curriculum — one of the earliest in Washington — at Ocean Park School, where she taught for many years.

The Heckes Place, 1920s

For those of you who often pause as you drive by the John Crellin House in Oysterville, it’s Helen’s bottle collection in the windows that you are admiring.  Until a house was built between the Heckes Place and our house in 1987, Helen was our family’s “next door neighbor.”  I still miss her and often think of her on those dark nights when the coyotes howl.