As published by the Daily News Journal, Sunday, February 4, 2012
By Greg Tucker, President of the Rutherford County Historical Society
The vast wealth accumulated by the oil barons of the American industrial age, and small blue ribbons, advanced the health of Rutherford’s children in the two decades between the world wars.
John D. Rockefeller had a few close friends and business associates in 1866 when he began his oil business. Among these were step-brothers Frank V. Harkness and Henry Flagler. The Rockefeller venture became the greatest industrial empire of that era—Standard Oil. The initial investors amassed fortunes that surpassed the wealthiest of royal families. Harkness, always a “silent partner,” was the second largest shareholder.
Following Harkness’ death, his widow and son contributed over $50 million to establish the Commonwealth Fund, a charitable foundation focused on promoting and improving health and health care for the poor and elderly, particularly in rural southern communities. (Flagler spent his share building railroads and developing the Florida peninsula.)
The former Rutherford County Health Department.
In 1924, the Commonwealth Fund began a child health demonstration unit in Rutherford County as one of its first four national pilot programs. The first year was difficult with Rutherford County health efforts scoring only 569 out of a possible 1,000 on an American Public Health Association assessment (up from 110 in 1923). Pre-school and school age children were dying of “preventable” diseases including typhoid fever and diphtheria. Nutrition and personal hygiene were unfamiliar concepts.
But in 1928, the APHA score for Rutherford County health programs was 814, “the highest ever made in the United States by a rural county health department.” Pleased with this success, the Commonwealth Fund built the Rutherford County Hospital, the first in a national program of hospitals for needy rural communities and small towns, and in 1931 funded construction of the Rutherford Health Department as the first permanent rural public health facility in the nation. (The hospital was demolished in 2010; the Health Department facility is now a county storage facility.)
In parallel with the work of the Commonwealth Fund, state health authorities were focusing on health education through the public schools. A first challenge was the education of teachers. In 1925 personnel from the Rutherford child health demonstration unit helped the local teachers’ college (now MTSU) in developing and presenting health education courses.
In 1926, the state introduced the Blue Ribbon Program for all school children. The objective was to “present both health information and practice in specific terms that can be understood and appreciated by school children.” The program recognized “health merit” by awarding a military-style blue ribbon bar to each child meeting specific standards.
“In order to obtain this blue ribbon a child must show himself mentally fit by satisfactory progress in his studies; he must show himself socially fit by being amenable to the ordinary school discipline; he must practice the various health habits which include proper food, recreation, rest, and personal hygiene; he must, on physical examination, prove himself free from all remediable physical defects, or have such defects corrected; and finally, he must have vaccination against smallpox, diphtheria and typhoid fever.” Within these requirements, discretion was left to local officials to work out the methods and specifics.
Led by the Commonwealth Fund’s demonstration unit, Rutherford school and health leaders enthusiastically implemented the Blue Ribbon Program with incentives for teachers and principals. Lively school competition was encouraged. Initially for all public school children, by the third year the focus was narrowed to the grammar schools (grades 1-8).
“We all wanted our class and school to be 100% blue,” remembers Jere Warner, a McFadden student in the 1930’s. “The teacher in the morning would pass around our individual health charts. We answered whether we had brushed our teeth, slept eight hours, bathed and exercised.”
There were also diet questions. “They wanted to know if we had eaten a leafy green vegetable,” remembers Warner. “At the time I wasn’t sure what qualified as a leafy green vegetable, but my best friend said he had eaten one so I said I had too.”
Another question asked whether a yellow vegetable was part of the child’s diet. “The teacher held up a squash as an example and I thought it looked familiar so I said I had eaten some of them, as well,” recalls Warner.
Local health personnel made periodic visits to the schools to do health examinations. “One year we were worried that our class would not be 100 percent because one of the boys was nearly deaf in one ear,” explains Warner. “He was sent to the clinic and they found that he had a bean stuck in his ear. It was removed and he passed the hearing test and qualified for the blue ribbon.”
Bobby Huddleston, a Training School student, remembers that vaccinations were the worst part of the ribbon program. “You had to get your shots to get your blue ribbon.”
Tuberculin tests were added in the late 1930s. If dental exams identified tooth decay, parents were notified and asked to pay one dollar per cavity for the dental work. “They sent all the dental work to a Smyrna dentist who would fill cavities for a dollar,” according to Warner.
A key part of the Rutherford program was the Blue Ribbon Parade. “If you earned your blue ribbon for the school year, then you were entitled to march in the annual parade,”remembers Warner. “On parade day, usually in the spring, we had to wear a white shirt and a paper hat in school colors.”
The marchers were taken by bus to the parade start east of town. A number of vehicles and parade floats, promoting health issues and various organizations, including many of the schools, would join the marchers.
“We would march in school groups to the square, and then around the courthouse. Somebody would make a speech, and then we would load back up and return to our respective school,” recounts Warner. “It was fun because of the tremendous crowd lining both sides of the street cheering for their school and children. For us the best part was getting a day off from school.”
On one parade day it rained. “Our paper hats faded and stained our shirts with the school colors,” explains Warner. “That was fun.”
Rutherford perennially led the state in Blue Ribbon numbers. In 1931, for example, Rutherford had 2,457 Blue Ribbon winners while Knox had 1,860 and Davidson 1,774. Shelby County, with the largest school system, had only 353 winners.
By 1940, the Blue Ribbon Program was limited to the first four grades with an increasing emphasis on parent education and parental involvement in health screening and examinations. The rates of childhood diphtheria and typhoid fever were dramatically reduced. The last parade is believed to have preceded the outbreak of war in 1941.
Greg Tucker can be reached at [email protected].