100 Years of Life
On April 21, 1921, a doctor came to Carrie and Ralph Gilchrist's farmhouse on Harmony Hill near Harrisville to deliver what they assumed was just one baby.
“The doctor told Dad to get another blanket; there's another one coming,” said Olive Gilchrist Miller's daughter, Sue Hovis of Polk. “They paid five dollars for Opal and Mom was free!”
Even at birth, Olive was not in a hurry to leave the womb, while her sister Opal was the first to pop out and explore.
Olive Miller, of Franklin, and her sister, Opal McCarl of Myrtle Beach, S.C., marked their 100th birthdays this year.
Both career educators took after their mother, who received a teaching certificate from the-then Slippery Rock Normal School in 1910. But their distinct preferences led to unique experiences.
“They are totally different personalities,” said Opal's daughter, Joan Gilchrist Dudek, of Myrtle Beach, S.C. Even as teens on the farm, Olive stayed inside, cooking and canning with her mother, while Opal was outside milking cows and pitching hay with her father.
But their mother, who made all their clothes, dressed them alike anyway.
“It was probably cheaper to buy one pattern, one trim and one spool of thread,” said Dudek.
The Gilchrists sold their farm in 1942 after the twins graduated from Harrisville High in 1939 and bought a home in Slippery Rock, most likely to make it possible to send their children to college, said Dudek.“It was a big house with seven bedrooms, where Grandma rented rooms to other female students, who cooked their meals in the basement kitchen,” she said of the home on Normal Avenue, now Slippery Rock University's Newman Center.Olive and Opal entered Slippery Rock State Teachers College in 1939 and paid about $36 for tuition and $5 for books, which they got back when they returned them, said Hovis. “Mom and Opal cleaned houses to help,” she added.When Olive married Clifford Miller in 1941 during her sophomore year, married women were not permitted to go to college. But she asked the administration to allow her to finish her studies and wound up becoming the first married female graduate, said Hovis. “She had to sign out to go out with her husband.”
Meanwhile, Opal, who described herself as an “extrovert” was busy with her studies and a plethora of extracurricular activities including the International Relations Club, chorus and orchestra, two sororities and the Rifle Club, according to the Slippery State Teachers College Saxigena year book of 1941.After both sisters completed their four weeks of required student teaching at a country school, their paths separated.Olive was hired for $1,300 per year to teach at the Miller School in Slippery Rock Township, the first of several one-room schools where she taught.According to “The History Project 2014,” oral histories compiled by Venango County students, Olive faced unique challenges teaching 40 plus students in eight different grades in schools such as the Walter School in Irwin Township in Venango County, which had not changed much since her mother's time spent teaching in one-room schoolhouses.There was a basin at the back of the school for filling ink wells. Olive once fell in through the trap door at the Walter School while refilling ink. Here she discovered that the students had disposed of their broken thermoses in the school's crawl space.In the Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, writers described the task of a one-room schoolhouse teacher as that of “a ringmaster of a three-ring circus.” She was a teacher, disciplinarian and janitor.
Hovis' father told a story about how Olive killed two birds with one stone. She transformed the attitude of one troublemaker by paying him a small stipend to fill the wood stove, sweep the floor and clean blackboards and erasers before school each day. He never gave her any trouble after that.On the other hand, Opal, who was paid to complete her student teaching at McKinley School in Coraopolis, had other challenges.“This little country girl went to the city and rented a room in a boarding house,” Opal said. The landlady was stricter than her mother, she said. There, she taught seventh- and eighth-graders in one classroom in a big, brick school voted “the most beautiful school in Pennsylvania.”She took a bus to work each day in the crowded city, she said, leaving with white collar and cuffs and coming home with black ones.“Pittsburgh was a steel town and very dirty,” she said.Opal married Charles McCarl, her sister's husband's cousin, in 1943 near his Army base in Baton Rouge, La., and stayed on at McKinley while he served in the Philippines.But she preferred the cleaner country air, and went back to teach for two years in Grove City after many of the country schools were consolidated.“I loved teaching geography, and it made me want to see the places I was teaching about,” she said. She passed on that inspiration to her students, who wrote to her after graduation about their travels.
Meanwhile, Olive's husband was drafted into the Army and was stationed in Texas. Oliver and her firstborn moved in with her parents in Slippery Rock until they returned. Eventually, the couple moved to Wesley, where she could walk to her job at the Wesley country school. She taught there until her superintendent asked her to teach at the Walter School in Necatrine. When she expressed concern about the commute, the superintendent said, “You have all summer to get a driver's license.The couple remained in the area after a consolidation of Victory schools. They raised two children and in 1965 bought a campground in Kennerdale, where they enjoyed much extended family time.Opal and Charles raised three children and resided in Mercer, where Opal taught most of her career.But they did not stay put.“We traveled to every state in the union,” said Dudek. She, her mother and her brother spent six weeks in Europe in 1970, touring Paris, London, Switzerland and Rome while Opal chaperoned a group of Mercer High School students on a trip. She later went to Alaska, Australia and Hawaii, Dudek said.
Though they began their careers differently, both sisters retired from local rural school districts, Olive with 28 years in Franklin, and Opal with 30 in Mercer.The sisters remained close, talking every day, said Hovis. But the last time they saw one another was in 2015, right before Opal moved to Myrtle Beach to be near her family. Olive still lives in Franklin area, said Hovis.Though the twins could not be together to celebrate their 100th birthday, they recently met on a Zoom conference call with one another's extended families, especially enjoying performances by the children, said Dudek.Opal credits her full, long life to “keeping up with the news, history and religion,” while Olive credits family and genes. Their mother lived to be 102.
