The Children of Pleasant Hill
The rising sun illuminated Kansas, and light crept across the plains of southeastern Colorado. It was now the end of March, and winter-weary families hoped the winds were gone that had scooped up and flung the snow and cold from farm to farm. The vicissitudes of the weather ruled these hardy people; during winter, they often were unable to journey by car or horse even to Holly, the nearest town. And although the Great Depression had not yet affected these poor ranchers and farmers, the forthcoming summer would bring the first of many droughts that would dry the earth and dogged winds that would rip topsoil from the farms.
On the remote plains this morning of March 26, 1931, low clouds extended from horizon to horizon, and the air was an uncommonly warm sixty degrees. The people were relieved. The troubles of winter were gone for another year.
Carl and Geneva Miller woke early to tend to their children—Louis, eighteen months, and Mary Louise, age eight—and to feed the cattle in the barn. When Geneva came into Mary Louise’s room to wake her for school, the little girl pushed aside the flour-sack curtain and peered out over the flatness. A few trees and tiny adobe-and-frame farmhouses dotted the dawning landscape. What a beautiful day it promised to be! Mary Louise decided that when she returned home from school that afternoon, she would take her pony, Prince, for a ride. Though she was only in the third grade, she knew how to saddle Prince herself. She looked forward to the hour or so each afternoon when she was not needed to help with chores and could gallop across the plains toward the horizon. In the mornings, however, Mary Louise was obligated to get dressed and help her mother prepare breakfast.
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Like many other Americans of 1931, the Millers were poor but resourceful. They had moved from Kansas to be near Carl’s parents and brother, and felt fortunate to have found 160 acres to lease. In addition to cultivating crops and raising chickens, pigs, and cattle, Miller received $100 a month from the school board to transport the children of eastern Kiowa County to the Pleasant Hill School—two wood-frame buildings about a mile and a half west of the Miller place. Schoolhouses were scattered in small intervals across the plains, affording every child an opportunity for an education through the eighth grade. Those wishing to complete high school had to board in Holly and attend the school there.
Miller’s 1929 Chevrolet farm truck had been fitted with a dusky-blue, wooden school bus body that had five windows along each side. He welcomed the additional money he earned from transporting youngsters to the Pleasant Hill School, and because he had always been skilled at fixing farm equipment, he had no cause for worry whenever the vehicle might break down. During summer vacation, Miller utilized the truck bed, without its bus top, in the fields. When the autumn harvest was at its peak and Carl and his brother worked long hours bringing in the crops, Geneva would bundle up little Louis and save Carl several hours of work by driving the school bus route herself.
At 7:20 a.m. Miller stepped from the back of the farmhouse and out of habit grabbed his fur-lined overcoat hanging next to the door, above the washtubs. He called to Mary Louise, who was washing dishes, that he would return in the bus to get her in about an hour. It usually took him at least an hour, depending on the weather, to pick up the twenty or so young people on his school bus route and deliver them to the Pleasant Hill School. Geneva was in the barn milking; he would help when he returned.
Transporting water for the students was also a part of Miller’s job because the school had no well. On this particular morning he dipped the bucket into the windmill tank, then glanced at the sky—so vast it seemed he could almost see the curvature of the earth. By the time he filled the water can and looked up again, the sun no longer shone yellow but was turning amber on the horizon. The sky momentarily seemed odd, Miller expected a bluer sky—but never mind. What a relief that spring, the most welcome season, would be along in the next few weeks. With spring, color would tinge the normally bleak landscape: buffalo grass, now dormant and brown, soon would be a green haze stretching to the horizon in every direction; placid brown and white cattle would begin grazing; the sky would grow tall and become intensely blue; and buds would form on the tips of the occasional tree. Miller looked forward to the upcoming weeks. Now, though, he saw only brown and gray—nude trees, bare earth, gravel and dirt roads, and adobe-brick walls.
“Children of the Storm: The True Story of the Pleasant Hill School Bus Tragedy”
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Miller entered the bus to readjust the piece of cardboard in one of the back windows. If he could ever get extra cash (an unlikely thought), he planned to replace the broken-out glass in the bus’s two rear windows. For now, he made do with cardboard inserted into the frames.
The air was so warm! He considered leaving his overcoat at home but decided not to take the time. He certainly would not need it this balmy morning. Miller cranked up the engine and chugged off on his morning rounds to the Pleasant Hill School. It was 7:30 a.m.; he was right on time. He would be back on the farm by 9:00 a.m. for his chores.
The family of Elmer and Margaret Brown lived in a two-room dugout a few hundred yards into Kansas, across the Colorado state line. Little more than a large, covered hole, the home consisted of a kitchen and one bedroom for the family of seven. Rosemary, age thirteen; Bobbie, eleven; and Maxine, eight, looked forward to escaping from their cramped underground home to join their friends at the Pleasant Hill School. Because they lived farthest from the school, Miller picked up the Brown youngsters first, then worked his way back toward Pleasant Hill, three and a half miles northwest. It was the Browns’ first year living here; Elmer farmed and ranched a rented 640 acres that was close enough to Holly (nineteen miles south) that he could exchange his cream and eggs for grocery staples at the general store. Though the Brown farm was officially situated in Greeley County, Kansas, the Pleasant Hill School was closer than the nearest Kansas school; therefore, Greeley County paid Kiowa County for educating the three youngest Brown children. (Harold and Roy, the elder children, had completed school through ninth grade and now helped their father on the farm.)
While Bobbie Brown slopped the hogs as he did every morning, his mother, Margaret, called out to remind him to take a coat in case a wind came up. Just then, the bus arrived, and no time remained to dart into the house for his jacket. Bobbie threw down the bucket and ran to the bus. His sisters, Rosemary and Maxine, emerged from the house where they had been helping clean up the breakfast dishes and make beds. They took the coats their mother handed them and put them on as they ran down the path. They wondered why; it was so warm. Maxine waved goodbye to their German shepherd, Fritz.
The Browns’ closest neighbors were Bessie and Reuben Huffaker, who also lived just into Kansas. There, the six school-age Huffaker children clambered aboard Miller’s Chevrolet: Alice, age fourteen; Charley, twelve; Carl, eleven; Max, ten; Lena, nine; and Laura, seven. Baby Betty and Robert, not yet old enough for school, and Gladys, who had already completed junior high, stayed at home. Though the Browns and Huffakers lived only a half mile apart, the youngsters were kept so busy on their farms that the school bus and the schoolhouse provided the only regular opportunities for socializing. Every morning Charley Huffaker milked the cows and fed the hogs. Alice was responsible for making sure her younger siblings made their beds before she went out to the barn to milk her five cows. Bessie, their mother, insisted that the entire family sit down to a hearty breakfast each morning, and the girls, even little Laura, helped prepare the meal. Then Bessie packed their lunches with beef or pork sandwiches and, in the autumn, if not too expensive, apples. Sometimes it grew tiresome to eat the same foods day after day, but Alice secretly traded with her friend Eunice Frost, who wearied of her own usual peanut butter sandwich. None of the Huffaker children dared complain that almost every wintertime supper consisted of cornbread and milk because they knew they were luckier than many families. They lived in a dugout house with an adobe ground-level addition, and their father, Reuben, owned four hundred acres, a new car, and—unlike most farmers—owed no debts. Nobody in the Huffaker family went hungry or wore shoddy clothes, and even on a morning as warm as this, their mother insisted they bundle up.
With six of her children now safely aboard Carl Miller’s bus and off to the Pleasant Hill School for the day, Bessie Huffaker turned on the radio to hear the weather report from Pueblo. It called for snow! How odd on a day promising such warmth. Of course the weatherman probably confined the forecast to Pueblo, 170 miles to the west, and certainly could not mean the Holly area. She glanced at the sky, noticing dark clouds gathering over the northern horizon—perhaps the weatherman was correct after all. Spring snowstorms on these plains could drop a good measure of snow but were quick to melt, nurturing the winter wheat and corn. Plus, spring storms never got very cold. Whatever was coming would probably blow over, Bessie Huffaker thought as she began gathering up dirty clothing and calming the baby. Today was washday, and she had better get started by boiling water.
In the Claude Frost household, a quarter mile northwest of the Huffakers and just inside Colorado, Eunice, fourteen, and Leland, seven, hurried to get ready for school. They washed their necks and ears (always ordered by their mother, Mary Muriel), combed their hair, brushed their teeth, gulped breakfast, then grabbed wraps and lunchpails, and scampered out to meet Carl Miller’s approaching bus. Their mother called to them to put on warmer clothes despite the balmy temperature, so Eunice dashed back into the house for her four-buckle overshoes. Ever protective of her happy-go-lucky younger brother, Leland, Eunice clutched his hand to help him climb onto the Chevrolet’s running board. She greeted her cousins, the Huffaker children.
Louise and Blanche Stonebraker lived with their parents, Dave and Nellie, nearly a mile north of the Frosts. As the bus rumbled into view along the gravel road toward the Stonebraker place, Louise was bickering with her mother. For her upcoming fourteenth birthday, only five days away, Louise had received a cardigan sweater, and she begged to wear it to school. Nellie Stonebraker demanded that she put on a coat instead, but Louise argued that the sweater was heavy enough on a day as warm as this. The ride to school was not very long, anyway! In exasperation her mother relented, and Louise strode toward the bus in her new cardigan. Ten-year-old Blanche ran ahead to sit with her friends Maxine Brown and Lena and Laura Huffaker.
Bus driver Carl Miller studied the sky again. The clouds, no longer lying on the horizon, puffed high in the sky, tinged with amber from the blowing dust. Clouds roiled from dark blue to light blue and back to dark blue, a phenomenon foreign to Miller. Certainly, the day had begun warm. Now the western horizon was darkening and a chill was coming. He had hoped to plow the garden after delivering his charges; however, if a storm were brewing, he might have to wait a day or two.
The bus drove on toward the two-story stucco farmhouse of Ernie and Florence Johnson to pick up their adopted child, Kenneth, age seven. That done, Carl Miller followed the turn in the road west to his own home, where chickens scurried about the yard. He honked the horn and his daughter, Mary Louise, ran out with her open coat flapping. It was 8:20 a.m.; he was right on time.
Usually, Miller picked up five children at his next stop, the Untiedt (pronounced “Unteed”) place. For the last several weeks, however, fourteen-year-old Clara Smith had been living with the family of Bud and Hazel Untiedt in exchange for helping Hazel with the children and house chores, bringing the total to six. Because she was shy, Clara found it difficult to live with someone else’s large family, but it was necessary, and she liked the Untiedts. Clara’s own family had recently rented a farm near Hartman, about six miles northwest of Holly, but she wanted to finish the school year at the Pleasant Hill School before joining them. (Her sister, Nora, was living with the Albert Crum family nearby for the same reason.) This was, after all, her final year before high school, as she planned, unlike many farm children, to continue her schooling through the twelfth grade. She would attend high school in Holly the following year, where she would again have to room. The current arrangements for Clara and Nora helped ease the financial burden on the Smith family.
As the bus bumped toward the Untiedt place, Clara hurried to help Hazel clean up the breakfast dishes of the five children, ages eight to twelve. Virgil Untiedt, age eleven, was recovering from a recent burn accident, so he remained home. Bryan, at twelve, the eldest of the Untiedt children and tall for his age, kissed baby Ruth Elaine (he loved children), then ducked through the door to catch the bus. Bryan got along well with the younger ones and was always eager to join them on the bus. His ten-year-old sister, Evelyn, grabbed her lunch bucket and ran to catch up with Bryan and brothers Ome, nine, and Arlo, eight. (They called Evelyn “Tommie” because she was a girl rather than one of them, but they liked her anyway.) Ome and Arlo, who resembled each other in appearance and in personality, scurried in tandem to the bus. Clara Smith draped her light coat across her shoulders and joined the group hurrying for the bus. The sky looked the way it did when a snowstorm was approaching, and the chill was intensifying. What happened to the nice morning? Clara wondered. She knew that March snowstorms in Colorado could dump a lot of wet snow, but that it never got very cold and the snow would melt in a day or two. This would probably blow over.
Ariana Harner formerly wrote and edited for the Colorado Historical Society (now History Colorado). She received a bachelor of arts from Mount Holyoke College and a master of arts from the University of Denver. Currently, she lives and works in Denver.
Clark Secrest is a retired editor and writer, now residing in Southern California. He graduated from the universities of Denver and Missouri and wrote for The Denver Post and the Colorado Historical Society (now History Colorado). He is the author of “Hell’s Belles,” a crime history of Denver and Colorado.
