By RHEA-FRANCES TETLEY
Historian
In July 1994, almost 32 years ago, Joseph Putnam Henck (Joseph for his father and Putnam after his mother but was known as Putty) spoke before the Crest Forest Historical Society at Leisure Shores in Crestline. Putty had a casual way of telling a story that made everyone interested and engaged.
Over 75 people came to hear his story, which he began with Mary Putnam Henck and Joseph Henck and their four kids (he was the oldest) moving to Skyforest in May 1923, exactly 103 years ago.
Joseph, Putty and Mary Henck as they looked while living in Hemet.
His mother, Mary, had lived quite a life before moving to the mountains (as detailed last week) and, despite having small children, continued to be very active after she arrived at the new Skyforest development her husband was creating. She almost immediately became involved with the community as she had in Hemet.
When the Lake Arrowhead Chamber of Commerce was started, although it was mostly men in the organization, she became its secretary in 1925, the same year she got the school bond passed for building the school for the area. As a former teacher and school vice principal, she had persuaded the county to provide educational books and materials and started an elementary school with 13 students in 1924 when her son Putty was old enough for first grade. Mary was the first and only teacher when the school started in the summer doctor’s office in Lake Arrowhead Village.
However, so many students had arrived within a week that another teacher was hired. Mary then promoted a school bond in 1925 that the voters passed (mostly parents of those students) to build a school building to house the new elementary school. She helped start the PTA for the new Lake Arrowhead School for grades first through eighth that opened in 1926, in the building that now houses Fire Station 91.
The new Lake Arrowhead School District even purchased school busses to get the kids to class since they were attending from diverse areas of the mountain from Twin Peaks to Cedar Glen. Mary continued to push for higher education for mountain students and was elected to the school board for many subsequent years.
The school’s classes remained in that building next to the entrance to Lake Arrowhead Village until the late 1940s as the number of students continued to increase. Finally, the district built an elementary school on the front cliff where Rim High is now; amazingly some of those original classrooms are still being used.
When the students graduated from eighth grade, if they chose to attend higher education, they had to be bussed down the hill to attend San Bernardino High School. It was a 3-1/2-hour bus drive down the mountain. The kids were often tired since they had to get up so early to attend school and got home so late in the day, from the seven hours on the bus every day.
The Masons installing the cornerstone at the dedication of the Lake Arrowhead School in 1926.
Mary insisted that, since there was no local school for them to attend, the county schools should pay for Monday through Friday lodgings for mountain students in San Bernardino. This idea was a win-win during the Depression since it also gave the families in San Bernardino some extra income when lodging extra children in their homes.
However, not all school students stayed in the valley; some did commute. When Putty was 13 years old, he got his driver’s license. He’d been driving work trucks and tractors since age 10 working on the Skyforest subdivision. When he went to high school, he became the driver for himself and others to get down the hill. So, he’d drive more down on Mondays and up on Fridays; the ones who did stay down the hill weekdays would come home with him, so the car was very crowded. Putty admitted he drove very fast on those now oiled roadways and swifter than 3-1/2 hours! The first graduating class of Rim of the World High School was in 1957.
When Mary Putnam Henck Intermediate School was built in 1969, Putty had already been elected to the Rim school board, Mary having died in 1963. He repeated her resume and her dedication to education. The school board voted to name the first intermediate school on the mountain in her honor, for her decades-long dedication of promoting education and years of service on the school board and for starting the Lake Arrowhead School District.
If that was all Mary Putnam Henck did for these mountains, that would be significant for the community, but it wasn’t. Conclusion next week.
The first Lake Arrowhead school bus in front of Alpine Terrace in Twin Peaks.
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