By the time I was old enough for second grade, Mom and Dad had decided that it was better for the family to be together in one place and we moved back into The Rock House.
My teacher in second grade was Mrs. Capps. She was a very short little lady but she was a good teacher and I liked her a lot as did everyone who knew her. She could play the piano so we had lots of music in her classroom. She would give us different instruments like sticks, bells and triangles and we would tap out the rhythm while she played the melody on the piano. We also did singing time which was fun. The other thing I can remember about second grade is that Mrs. Capps always read books aloud to the class each day. She would select a book and it would take several weeks for her to read it to us. Then she would pick another one to read. It was always a favorite time for all of us.
One of the things Mr. and Mrs. Capps did every year was to put on a school play towards the end of the school year. The plays had parts for every student in the school and were usually musical in nature. We would get out of school to go over to the church to practice on the stage. As I think about it now, I think they discovered a way to keep kids interested in school during the last few weeks in the spring. Rather than taking field trips, we put on a play. The weather was usually nice and the whole school would walk across town to the LDS church to practice several times a week. Mrs. Capps had kept all the costumes from previous years’ plays and she or the mothers would remodel them to fit the newest play and the new kids.
I don’t remember what the play was that year, but I do remember that I had a very important part. I got to be “Little Robin Red Breast” and I got to sing a little song. I can still remember the words:
Little robin red breast warbles in a tree
Bringing happiness to everyone he sees
You can all be happy, just like me today
When you hear me calling, Cheer‑e-o it’s May
I don’t know if this was the beginning of my acting career but it was certainly a memorable start. I was in a number of different plays over the years I was in school in Heber.
Another thing I remember about Mrs. Capps was that she would help us with leather work projects. I think it was when we were in higher grades. We had the chance to pick out a leather work project like a belt or wallet and she would help us with it during the “craft period” of school. It may have been on Friday afternoons but all the kids worked on a project they had selected and created something. As I think back on what Mr. and Mrs. Capps did, it is amazing how many different things they worked into the schooling of the kids in Heber. It’s probably no wonder they were hired back to run the school year after year. It’s only appropriate that the school is named after them.