Aug. 23, 2026
Seeing a new generation of students go back to school this week reminds me of the eighth grade in the “middle school” which was housed in what is now the Transylvania County Community Services Building on Morgan Street near the library and my teacher that year, Mr. Merrill.
Mr. Merrill was a creative educator who challenged us to put together the 8th-grade newspaper from local and national information sources, which he would then mimeograph (the forerunner of desktop personal computer printing) and later share with the entire school.
World War II had recently ended and I had read about captured German, Japanese, and Italian being sunk as proof of victory, the odd practice of burning of excess grain in the Midwest during the Great Depression, and news stories depicting starving children in China.
After digesting all of this, I synthesized those pieces of information together into my 8th-grade editorial suggestion of using former Axis ships to take excess grain to feed my hungry grade-school counterparts in China.
Unfortunately, my juvenile journalism career began at the same time as Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist “Red Scare” hysteria and someone’s parent questioned if in some small way I might be part of that larger international problem.
Fortunately for me, after a brief preliminary discussion, investigation, and consultation, my family was declared neither “red” or “pink,” using the terms of that era.
I hope no 8th graders this year have to endure such scrutiny.
Dr. Keith Parker is a pastoral counselor, Jungian analyst, and local historian who lives in the Dunn’s Rock community of Transylvania County. His column appears on BrevardBeagle.com when he can find time to write his thoughts down.
Click here to visit the archive of previously published Parker on the Past columns.