Martha Thomas of Cardinal has spent a lifetime in Mathews County, and she recently looked back over the years with fond memories, from her childhood to her career as a teacher.

The youngest of six children, Thomas said her father, Charles Edward Spriggs Sr., was a commercial waterman who planted vegetables and raised hogs when he was at home, while her mother, Daisy Helen Ware Spriggs, worked as a crab picker and oyster shucker, did all the canning and preserving, and raised chickens. The family was entirely self-sufficient and everybody helped out, said Thomas.

“There was no such thing as ‘expected,’” she said. “You did.”

When her father was at sea, said Thomas, her mother “ruled the roost.”

“She was in charge,” she said emphatically. “She decided what you would do, and you did it.”

As the youngest, Thomas was expected from an early age to help with washing dishes and cleaning house, and as she grew older and her siblings left, “the work trickled down” until “finally, there was nobody but me and my mom.”

Thomas was in the ninth grade when her world shattered. Her father drowned in Mobjack Bay and it “ripped the family apart,” she said. “But,” she added, “it didn’t take long for my mom to put things back.”

Thomas’s earliest memory of school is of her older sister, Sallie Foster, teaching her right in their own home. Foster taught her how to write numbers and comprehend their meaning and how to tell time when Thomas was still a preschooler. When she began her formal education at Hicks Wharf School, She walked the mile and a half to school every day in spite of the fact that a school bus drove right past her house.

“It couldn’t pick us up because of the race situation,” she said. “We walked it every day, in rain, snow, or sleet. It didn’t make a difference.” Schools in Mathews were segregated in those days—the late 1930s—and no buses were provided for African American children.

Thomas said she couldn’t understand why there was a bus that went by her house but it wouldn’t pick her up and take her to school.

“It didn’t bother me,” she said, “but I just wondered why. In a child’s mind it didn’t make sense. As you got older you understood it was the social order of the day. If people didn’t want you around, they didn’t want you around.”

Thomas’s mother would tell her not to worry about it. “Just walk to school and be safe,” she’d say. “Just be the best you can be. It’s in God’s hands. Jesus died for everybody, but everybody don’t know that yet.”

Education was important in her family, said Thomas, and she had teachers who expected a lot of their students, especially in terms of their religious practices. Mrs. Beatrice Bobo and Mrs. Ella Gallup expected students to learn all of the psalms in the Bible by singing them, and the children weren’t allowed to pack their bags and leave the classroom until they had sung “Now the Day is Over.”

“There were no big discipline problems,” said Thomas.

School teachers fixed hot chocolate for the four dozen or so students every morning, said Thomas, and they cooked lunch every day, always a green vegetable and loaf bread with an entrée such as fried chicken or hot dogs and, sometimes, a little dessert such as cake. Fresh unpasteurized whole milk was always available from a lady down the road who owned a cow. Wearing a long apron, the lady would carry a pail of milk to the school and trade it for the empty pail from the day before. As the years passed, this gave way to a milkman who brought small individual cartons.

When they ate their daily meals, the students learned a thing or two about table manners.

“We never had a meal without washing our hands,” said Thomas, “and we never had a meal without saying grace.”

She remembers the premium placed on the paper towels students used to dry their hands. Two students would be given a single paper towel, and they would tear it in half to share.

“You’re never thankful for the small things until you can do better,” said Thomas.

Every morning started with the Pledge of Allegiance, she said, and everyone was expected to participate. There was brief national controversy over the use of the words “Under God,” she said, but her teacher insisted they use the words.

“Our first pledge was to God,” said Thomas, “and she wanted us to know this country was under the leadership of God.”

The two classrooms and cloakroom were heated with a wood stove. At the end of each day, the children collected all the scrap paper that had been discarded and put it in the woodstove. The next morning, the first one at school would light the paper on fire to get the kindling started, then add wood.

“It would quickly heat up that two-room situation,” said Thomas.

Mrs. Gallup, who lived in Gloucester, boarded during the week at a large house across the street from the school, and students were welcome to stop by the house and swing in the swings on the big wraparound porch, said Thomas.

Mrs. Gallup and Mrs. Bobo made their share of visits, as well, she said, regularly dropping by students’ houses to talk to parents about their children’s progress. And the visits weren’t easy. Neither teacher had a vehicle in those days, so unless they happened to catch a ride, they walked to the students’ homes, some of which were all the way down in Mobjack.

“I was blessed as far as my education was concerned by good, caring women,” said Thomas.

Eventually, neighborhood resident Abraham Parrish bought a bus and would give children a ride to school. He didn’t charge anything, said Thomas, adding, “All they had to do was be out there.”

By the time she reached the sixth grade, the county had purchased a bus for the black population, and Thomas was able to ride it to Thomas Hunter School, which served students through 12th grade.

The principal was J. Murray Brooks, who always started school with a devotion, the pledge to the flag, and a religious song, said Thomas. Her sixth grade teachers were Susie Burrell, who taught geography, civics, and health, and Mrs. Edmond Diggs, who taught math, science, and “good old Baptist songs.”

Lunch was often hot dogs—the meat of the day—said Thomas, and there were always vegetables and homemade rolls. After lunch, the students sang such old Baptist favorites as “This is My Father’s World” and “Blessed Assurance.”

“They taught us how to harmonize,” said Thomas, who was a member of the Glee Club but also played softball and basketball.

Thomas graduated from high school in 1955, then, with her mother paying for her classes by picking crabs, she earned an associate’s degree in physical education at Norfolk State College (now a university). While in her third year of college, Thomas got married and took a year off school to go to Germany with her husband, Lemuel Thomas, who was in the military at that time. When they returned to Mathews, she completed a bachelor’s degree in social studies at Virginia State.

After student teaching at Booker T. Washington in Norfolk, Thomas got a job in Mathews, where she taught social studies and physical education at Thomas Hunter High School. While teaching, she earned a master’s degree in health from Hampton University.

When the county school system was integrated in 1969, Thomas was transferred to Mathews High School, where she taught health and driver’s ed until retirement. Along the way, she had a son, Lemuel Augustus Thomas Jr., who was educated in the Mathews Public Schools and has been career military for over 20 years.

Long since retired, Thomas hasn’t lost her desire to learn and understand. She keeps up with the national and international news, and she is disturbed by what she sees in other parts of the world today—beatings and beheadings and tribal warfare.

“That’s keeping hate alive,” she said.

But the lessons she learned from her long-ago teachers sustain her.

“The one commandment we must all live under is that we must love one another,” said Thomas. “I ask for God’s grace to shine. All you can say is ‘Lord, forgive them.’”