Elmer & Ruth had one son, Larry.
The following is an article published about Elmer:
Gentle Recalls Family Values Emphasized During Depression by Kathleen Dero, Mt. Vernon Register-News, Feb. 27, 1993.
According to Elmer C. Gentle, the values needed today to succeed are the same ones he learned growing up in Jefferson County.
“All you have to have is determination. Our new president was making about $45,000 a year as governor of Arkansas. Today, he’s making about $200,000 a year. He dreamed as a year as a youngster and he set goals. You’ve just got to be tenacious – have drive and willpower,” Gentle said.
Gentle, who spent more than 50 years working for state and township public aid programs, was born and raised about three miles east of Bluford in Pendleton Township.
Gentle grew up on a “short” 40 acres across the top of Pendleton Township. After a survey correction, that section of land was found to have only 36 acres.
Gentle’s father, Calvin, farmed with horse-drawn implements. They had chickens and hogs. Saturdays, the Gentles went to market to exchange eggs and cream.
Hard work and the importance of family were values Elmer learned early.
Elmer did odd jobs on the farm, such as carrying wood. However, his father did not need much help with the small acreage, so Elmer went to work for his father’s sister and her husband in O’Dell, Ind.
“They paid room, board, laundering and $30 a month. You see how members of the family helped out,” Gentle said.
His uncle did not even get too mad when Elmer accidentally plowed up half a row of planted corn.
After one summer’s farm experience there, he hired out to a farm owned by a canning company. He harvested peas in June, corn in August and pumpkins in October, all using mules.
“I just got back in time to go to school at Carbondale,” Gentle recalled. “I |registered on the last day.”
Education was a priority for the Gentle family.
“My father had a sixth-grade education and my mother didn’t get beyond eighth grade. My parents were dead set that I get more formal schooling. They wanted me to have a better life than they’d had,” he said.
He did. He graduated from Bluford High School – twice. In 1928, when he first graduated, Bluford was a two-year school.
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| Bluford Class of 1928, Elmer 2nd row at left |
So Gentle went back to school and graduated again. For the fourth year of high school, he attended Opdyke Community High School, finishing there in 1930.
“Then I thought I would like to be an elementary school teacher, so I went to Southern at Carbondale, which was a teachers’ college then,” Gentle recalled.
“I didn’t enjoy it. I came home and told Dad I was going to head out and get a job somewhere. He was pretty patient. He listened to me and then he said, ‘What you’re going to do is not what you think you’re going to do.’ He talked me into going back to school.”
Elmer attended just long enough to get a teaching certificate and then went to work at the Witherspoon School, better known as “Screamer” school.
He taught there two years before moving to Bluford Grade School as principal – with a staff of two, including himself.
“I taught 65 kids in the four upper grades and the primary teacher taught the lower grades,” Gentle recalled.
Gentle also taught basketball. His salary for all that was $65 a month for eight months of the year.
In 1933, the same year that he married, he asked the school board for a $10 raise and was refused. So he went to Hickory Hill School 1 ½ miles away and received $70 a month teaching 20 or so children. He stayed there three years but returned to Bluford in 1937 to be principal for $100 a month.
“I decided I couldn’t make a living teaching school so I started looking around. I needed to work 12 months a year,” Gentle said.
Growing up in rural Jefferson County during the Great [[#|Depression]] made Gentle aware of the value of money.
“Everybody didn’t have money. It was a tough old time. The bank closed down there (at Bluford) and never reopened. My grandparents had set aside money to bury them with, but they lost every cent they had in the bank,” Gentle recalled. “It strengthened me. It was a good experience. We had plenty to eat. We had to wear patched shirts and overalls but we never suffered. We had a good home life. “
Good family relations as well as good money habits came in handy later too.
“When my wife and I got married in ’33, we didn’t have a pocketful of money. We didn’t have money to buy a house. My father told me that he would go with me to see Uncle George. They were conservative people who saved money,” Gentle said.
Gentle put $200 down on the new, five-room bungalow valued at that time at $1,000.
“We helped everyone out and we paid the money back,” he recalled.
After his second spell as principal in Bluford, his Republican township supervisor nominated him for a job that paid $125 month for 12 months.
Gentle and four others who were nominated had to go to Springfield to take a test for a job as supervisor of the old age [[#|assistance]] program.
“We went up at our expense. There wasn’t any provision in the budget for a tank of gas. Of the five of us that took the test, two passed. One was Democrat and one Republican; you know who got the job,” Gentle recalled.
The Republican hopeful was “a real nice fellow” but he had no job experience, whereas Gentle was a Democrat and had been working.
“Politics played its part in those days but it wasn’t all bad. The supervisor represented the people for the township in those days,” Gentle said.
Politics did lead to complications, however. Because the two Republicans on the County Board supported Gentle, the rest of the county supervisors got into a “terrible wrangle” trying to determine whether Gentle was a Democrat or a Republican. Finally, the poll books were brought in and gentle was discovered to be a registered Democrat.
In 1939, Gentle and his wife, Ruth, moved to Mt. Vernon and Gentle took a job in the Mt. Vernon office of the state old age assistance program. He worked for the state from June 15, 1938 to Dec. 31, 1974.
As administrator of the old age pension, Gentle learned about dealing with the public.
At that time, the old age assistance program was under the state department of Welfare. A letter from A.L. Bowen, director at that time, reads in part, “stand like the Rock of Gibralter . . . administer our trust without fear or favor!”
Gentle quickly learned that patience is a cardinal virtue in dealing with the public.
“The governor gave a speech at the Mt. Vernon Fairgrounds. He said that if you made an application for old age assistance, you’d be eligible. I wasn’t at the fair, but I heard about the speech from all the elderly people,”Gentle said.
The assistance program was designed to help elderly people who were poor – not all the elderly.
“It was for the needy people; public aid has always been that way. Just being 65 wasn’t enough to get a pension but they thought it was. IT was kind of heck if you do and heck if you don’t,” Gentle recalled.
He worked for that office until retirement in Dec. 31, 1974. One of the highlights of his years of public work was being named president of the state’s County Supervisors Association in 1959.
“It was honorary but it made me feel good,” he said.
Gentle saw many changes in the Department of Public Aid, as it is known today.
“I grew up with it. It’s a big business; a lot of people depend on it. It grew thick and fast. The federal government encouraged states to develop these programs, like blind pensions and the widowed mothers pensions. Then disability assistance and food stamp programs were added,” Gentle recalled.
Though some people pooh-poohed a “welfare” state, Gentle approved of the growth.
“I thought it was a good idea. People have always needed help and always will,” he said.
That does not mean people should remain dependent on charity, however, he opined.
“Not all people can be wealthy but you can learn to take care of yourself. If I could do it back in the Depression, people can do it now,” Gentle said.
Gentle never forgot the lessons of hard work he learned growing up in the Depression.
A few months after “retiring” in 1974, Gentle was approached about helping out in the Mt. Vernon Township general assistance office. He became administrator there for four years and then supervisor of the township for two more years, until 1981.
Gentle has kept busy since his second retirement, also. He and his wife like antiques of all kinds. Also, Elmer spends time taking care of Ruth, who has had health problems.
Their son, Larry, is a self-employed accountant in Kansas. He does his parents’ tax work – an example of the family loyalty that he learned growing up in Jefferson County.
Sources:
Elmer Gentle obituary
Ruth Gentle obituary
Mt. Vernon Register-News
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