Amy Vach
Catalog Number: 2017.fic.1633
This week’s Things that Matter features a homemade greeting card. Instead of sending a store-bought Christmas card, every year Mauree Applegate Clack created a poetry booklet to send to family and friends.
The following poem is from the last page of Applegate’s Year’s End 1951 Year’s Beginning 1952 booklet of poetry.
Seasons Fleeting
Fall, winter, summer, spring —
I wouldn’t miss it for anything —
I can’t understand it
So I quip it,
But as for dying
I think I’ll skip it —
If there’s more,
I’d like to stay and see it,
I’d rather “dish the dirt”
than be it.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Mauree Applegate was born in 1897 in Atlanta but graduated from high school in Washington, Iowa. She began her teaching career very early in life. After one year at the Washington County Teaching Department, she began teaching at a rural school in Iowa at 17. The school board dismissed Miss Applegate from her first teaching position because she apparently could not handle children. At the young age of 17, some of the students in her classroom were nearly her age. That must have been a challenging first teaching job.
Miss Applegate did not let her troublesome first experience halt her teaching career. She went back to school and attended Platteville State Teachers College and the University of Wisconsin. She then went to Northwestern University in Illinois, where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
In the 1920s, she returned to teaching in rural schools in Wisconsin. In 1934, she was named the Rock County’s superintendent of schools and then went on to be named the city supervisor of schools in Neenah.
Miss Applegate joined the La Crosse community in 1945 as part of the faculty at the La Crosse State Teachers College. In the 1950s, she created her “Let’s Write” radio program on the Wisconsin School of the Air, where she reached over 60,000 Wisconsin school children. Her radio program lasted 12 years. Some La Crosse students might remember their teacher bringing out the radio and listening to her program.
In 1955, Miss Applegate married Willis Charles Clack. Unfortunately, Clack passed away four months later.
In addition to her radio program and teaching career at the State Teachers College, Mrs. Applegate Clack was known nationally as a lecturer and author of textbooks for college students. In 1966, she retired and was given the title Professor Emeritus of Elementary Education.
Throughout her teaching career, Mrs. Applegate Clack strived to stimulate children’s imagination. In 1963, a La Crosse Tribune reporter wrote, “To Mrs. Clack, words are like a box of colors or paints that can stimulate the imagination and open a whole new world of expression.”
Mauree Applegate Clack passed away July 11, 1969.
If you haven’t sent out your cards yet, think about taking a lesson from Mrs. Applegate Clack and stimulating your imagination by writing a verse or two for your family and friends this year.
This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on December 18, 2020.
This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.
