When you got to seventh grade in Heber you finally got into Mr. Capps room. You were one of the “big people” in school. Mr. Capps was a very tall man with a very dark complexion. He also had a very loud, deep voice that could strike fear into the hearts of all school children. When you finally got into seventh grade, you discovered that Mr. Capps was really a fun guy who wasn’t nearly as scary as everyone thought. He was also a good teacher and didn’t put up with much in the way of poor work or laziness. Mr. Capps was the principal of the school and he was the one who rang the recess bell or rang the bell to announce school was starting. He had a bell on a handle and he would walk out into the main hall connecting the three classrooms and ring the bell for school to start. For recess, he would just raise the window at the back of his room and put his hand out and ring the bell to end recess. I don’t think the school ever had an electric bell system when I was attending there.

Mr. Capps was also the coach for all the sports played by the “upper classmen” in seventh and eighth grades. He coached basketball, softball, and track. Those were the sports we could compete in and we tried. I don’t think Heber had a mascot that I can remember. We were just “Heber.” We would have softball practice during recess and after school sometimes. We played the elementary schools in Pinedale, Clay Springs, and Show Low and the Jr. High in Snowflake. I don’t remember that we ever beat the Jr. High in Snowflake because it had all the kids from both Snowflake and Taylor and some of them were pretty good. We could beat some of the teams from the smaller towns.

Because we didn’t have a full-sized gym, we always had to travel to play basketball. We would load up in Mr. Capps’ car and he would drive us to the games. I guess sometimes some of the parents must have helped with the transportation. The yearly track meet was always held in Snowflake. I can remember that, by default, I got the job of throwing shotput one year. We decided who would throw shotput by tryouts. We didn’t have a real shotput so we just found a big rock and everyone threw it. I guess I threw it about as far as anyone and since I wasn’t in the running events, I got to throw the shotput. I was pretty proud of myself until I got to the track meet and lifted a real shotput. I don’t think I even threw it far enough to get to where they began measuring the distance. Oh well!! I got to go to the track meet with the others.

We had a similar problem in basketball. Because our half of a gym didn’t have an extended backboard—or any backboard for that matter—we learned to run up and stop when shooting lay ups so that we didn’t kill ourselves on the wall. When we went to play at other schools, they had the extended backboards and their guys would run fast at the basket and shoot those lay ups and we would run up and slow down before we got to the basket and they would usually catch up with us. Needless to say, our fast break left something to be desired. Shooting at a basket with a backboard was a new experience, too. Oh well!! We had fun playing.

When it carne to softball we could play with anyone. Softball was a “Heber sport.” We had a ball, and a bat, and we had bases, and we had gloves and cleats and we could beat most other teams. I suppose the fact that we spent nine months a year playing softball could have had something to do with it. We did love our softball and the girls were almost as good as the boys.

 

I don’t have a lot of memories about my sophomore year of high school. I know I took English, Geometry, World History, Ag (two periods), Seminary, and PE. My English teacher was an interesting guy. Most of the year was literature and he liked the morbid types of literature like Edgar Allen Poe’s poems and stories. I figured that out pretty fast, so when we had to write our own stories I made sure they were as morbid as possible. I remember one was about the “perfect crime” in which the murder was committed by stabbing with an ice-sickle but the blood didn’t wash off—it froze on—and when the murderer threw the icicle in the bay, a layer of ice froze over the blood, preserving it perfectly. I think I got an “A” for that one.

While I was a sophomore, I was elected to membership in the “Key Club.” It was the student service club sponsored by the Kiwanis Club for men. For one of the meetings we got to attend the “real” Kiwanis Club Meeting to see what it was like. I remember the men were always making motions to the “chair” that so and so be fined ten cents for some silly thing they had done or said (like swallowing too loudly or eating their beans before their potato etc.) and the motion always carried and the fine was levied. I don’t know how many dimes the club members went through in an evening but it was quite a few. It seemed to be a contest to see who could come up with the most outlandish charge. We watched and kept our mouths shut so we wouldn’t get fined. 

One of the things the school clubs did every year was to sponsor a booth in the school carnival. Each club had developed a specialty and the club members would man the booth on a rotating basis throughout the evening. There were small prizes for the winners. I am not sure now what the money we raised was used for but it was a good activity. I can remember that the FFA booth was a “goofy golf course” using holes we had made out of sheet metal. It was pretty difficult to win. I can’t remember what the Key Club’s booth was, but there were booths with a baseball throw, a football throw, popping balloons with darts, a ring toss and lots of others. We had a lot of fun putting it on and I think the students had a lot of fun, too. 

I worked at the store after school so I did not participate in very many of the after school activities. At that time the schools would arrange and pay for interesting “people” or “acts” to visit the schools during school time to put on an “assembly.” All the students in the school would get out of class for about an hour or so to go to the auditorium to watch the assembly. Some were educational and some were just entertaining. I can remember one about “Liquid Nitrogen,” one with gyroscopes, several with acrobats, jugglers or magicians. There were some with clowns and some with trained animals. They were all usually very good and everyone enjoyed them. I think the performers went from school to school across the state putting on the shows. Different shows were selected each year.

 

My teacher in sixth grade was Mr. Stevens. It was unusual at that time to have men teaching elementary school except for Mr. Capps, of course. I don’t know whether Mr. Stevens was the first male teacher in the Heber School System besides Mr. Capps or not, but I don’t remember any others.

Mr. Stevens was an OK teacher, but I don’t remember much about what he taught us. I do remember that after school he would sometimes spend time with the boys in the class. Several times he walked with us down to the little café that was next to the service station and we would have a pop with peanuts in it. I guess he may have been the one to teach me to pour a small bag of salted peanuts into a Barg’s Strawberry Soda and watch it fizz up. I’m not sure that is what he would have wanted to be remembered for but it is one thing I do remember about him.

Another thing I remember about him is that he decided that instead of an end of school play, we should put on a play at Christmas time. That was unheard of in Heber but he went ahead and did it. The name of the play was “Santa and the Spaceman.” I was Santa and Charlie Reidhead was the spaceman. I remember there were some neat props for the play but that is about all I remember about it. I wore a Santa suit and beard and had a pillow to pad my belly. In later years I replaced the pillow.

I guess the original LDS church building must have burned down about this time because up until it burned down, the school used the church gym for basketball practice and games. We also used the stage at the church for school plays because there was not a stage at the school. Following the fire, a gym and extra class room was added onto the school building. The sixth grade met in the new classroom. It had some lab-type tables and we were able to do some simple lab experiments that were fun.

The other thing I remember about sixth grade is playing four‑square. When the gym was added onto the school we had a place to play indoors. Someone had four‑square courts painted on the gym floor so that we could play four-square in the winter when the weather was bad outside. We played it a lot and had a lot of fun playing it. We could also play basketball indoors and that was lots of fun. Unfortunately, we did not have a backboard that extended out into the gym. All we had was a basketball hoop attached to the wall at approximately the correct height, but we were glad for an indoor hoop. The only problem was that when you went in to shoot a lay up, you ran splat into the wall. They didn’t worry about having a pad for us to run into. It was just the flat wooden wall, but we survived.

The gym also had a stage at one end where we could put on plays or have programs. That stage is where I graduated from the eighth grade.

 

My “Senior Year” at Snowflake Union High School was 1965‑66. Not too many things stand out as memorable in my senior year. Maybe my most memorable class that year was English. It was taught by a lady named “Miss Jones.” It was unusual to have a female teach English and even more unusual to have a “Miss” teach it. She was relatively fresh out of college herself and I think Snowflake was one of her first teaching positions. She actually tried to prepare us for the English we would take in college. We learned to write essays and research papers and we even learned some “Public Speaking” in her class. She played soft music during the time we were writing essays and that was also very unusual. I was glad she taught us something before I went off to college.

I also took German as an elective my senior year and enjoyed that. The teacher was Mr. Bates (Herr Bates). We learned little dialogues and practiced talking to each other and we had a lab with small cubicles with ear phones and microphones where Herr Bates could talk to us individually to help us practice or listen in while we were practicing with each other. I was an officer in FFA and I think also in Key Club that year.

One incident I remember from my senior year is seminary graduation. Our seminary teacher decided that for graduation we should learn the Tabernacle Choir version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” We practiced and practiced and got pretty good at singing it with all the different parts: soprano, alto, tenor and bass. The seminary graduation was held in the Snowflake Stake Center and one of my good buddies was the organist who accompanied us on the large church organ. He was very good on the organ. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but about half way through the song, the lights went out, including the light on the organ. He never missed a beat and we kept right on singing to the end. He had memorized the music. It was pretty impressive to me. I still remember the bass part to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I wonder if the Tabernacle Choir would sound as good as we did that night if they had to sing in the dark?

I don’t remember too much about High School Graduation. At that time the graduates and their families attended a religious meeting called a “Baccalaureate Exercise” the Sunday evening before graduation. It was a routine part of the graduation activities. Some of the church leaders would give motivational talks. The regular graduation was held in the gym.

I look back on my high school years with good memories. I was glad to be finished with high school and move on to college, but I had a lot of good experiences in high school. I enjoyed the group I was with and I learned a lot from many of the teachers. They tried their best to teach us.

By the time I was old enough for second grade, Mom and Dad had decided that it was better for the family to be together in one place and we moved back into The Rock House.

My teacher in second grade was Mrs. Capps. She was a very short little lady but she was a good teacher and I liked her a lot as did everyone who knew her. She could play the piano so we had lots of music in her classroom. She would give us different instruments like sticks, bells and triangles and we would tap out the rhythm while she played the melody on the piano. We also did singing time which was fun. The other thing I can remember about second grade is that Mrs. Capps always read books aloud to the class each day. She would select a book and it would take several weeks for her to read it to us. Then she would pick another one to read. It was always a favorite time for all of us.

One of the things Mr. and Mrs. Capps did every year was to put on a school play towards the end of the school year. The plays had parts for every student in the school and were usually musical in nature. We would get out of school to go over to the church to practice on the stage. As I think about it now, I think they discovered a way to keep kids interested in school during the last few weeks in the spring. Rather than taking field trips, we put on a play. The weather was usually nice and the whole school would walk across town to the LDS church to practice several times a week. Mrs. Capps had kept all the costumes from previous years’ plays and she or the mothers would remodel them to fit the newest play and the new kids.

I don’t remember what the play was that year, but I do remember that I had a very important part. I got to be “Little Robin Red Breast” and I got to sing a little song. I can still remember the words: 

Little robin red breast warbles in a tree

Bringing happiness to everyone he sees

You can all be happy, just like me today

When you hear me calling, Cheer‑e-o it’s May

I don’t know if this was the beginning of my acting career but it was certainly a memorable start. I was in a number of different plays over the years I was in school in Heber.

Another thing I remember about Mrs. Capps was that she would help us with leather work projects. I think it was when we were in higher grades. We had the chance to pick out a leather work project like a belt or wallet and she would help us with it during the “craft period” of school. It may have been on Friday afternoons but all the kids worked on a project they had selected and created something. As I think back on what Mr. and Mrs. Capps did, it is amazing how many different things they worked into the schooling of the kids in Heber. It’s probably no wonder they were hired back to run the school year after year. It’s only appropriate that the school is named after them.