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When an open house was held on March 17, for the 1923 Aurora High School that would soon be torn down, there was a beautiful trophy display case in the basement near the auditorium. It was 10 feet long and had curved glass on the front corners.
Where did it come from? Was it original to the school? No one seemed to know.
After talking about it to Georgia Norman Wallace, her daughter found what may be the answer while looking in the annual belonging her father, William Wallace, a 1927 graduate of AHS. It said that the Class of 1927 donated a trophy case to the high school in its senior year.
In researching history of the old school, everyone remembered a long trophy case sitting at the head of the front stairs beside the grandfather clock.
Memories got foggy about where it was after the Class of 1954 donated two large trophy cases to the school. They also sat at the top of the stairs by the grandfather clock.
Back to 1926: that was the year the Class of '27 started its senior year. It was also the year Virgie Mae Hilton finished her 10th year at Clay Hill School south of Aurora (which offered two years of high school) and started her junior year at Aurora, renting a room through the week and returning home when her dad picked her up on Friday.
Virgie would have known the kids in the class that donated the trophy case and surely walked past it every day.
She graduated in 1928 and started a four year attendance at Southwest Missouri Teachers' College (later to become Southwest Missouri State, then Missosuri State University). With three of those four years occurring during the depression and her parents encouraging her with moral support but able to offer little in the way of financial help, she worked for room and board while she attended college.
Her first two positions were at Fairview teaching John Q. Hammons among others, then at Wilks School near Verona teaching Claude K. Hulen, an inventor in the field of photoengraving and also instrumental in developing a system that reads bar codes.
After marrying C. H. King, she spent the next few years raising their son Don, working in her church and cooking in the cafeteria at Lowell School.
In 1949, Virgie returned to her alma mater as the librarian and “study hall keeper.” This new position teaching library science required a return to college. In1950, attending summers, she started at Pittsburg Teachers' College in Kansas, graduating in 1955.
When an open house was held on March 17, for the 1923 Aurora High School that would soon be torn down, there was a beautiful trophy display case in the basement near the auditorium. It was 10 feet long and had curved glass on the front corners.
Where did it come from? Was it original to the school? No one seemed to know.
After talking about it to Georgia Norman Wallace, her daughter found what may be the answer while looking in the annual belonging her father, William Wallace, a 1927 graduate of AHS. It said that the Class of 1927 donated a trophy case to the high school in its senior year.
In researching history of the old school, everyone remembered a long trophy case sitting at the head of the front stairs beside the grandfather clock.
Memories got foggy about where it was after the Class of 1954 donated two large trophy cases to the school. They also sat at the top of the stairs by the grandfather clock.
Back to 1926: that was the year the Class of '27 started its senior year. It was also the year Virgie Mae Hilton finished her 10th year at Clay Hill School south of Aurora (which offered two years of high school) and started her junior year at Aurora, renting a room through the week and returning home when her dad picked her up on Friday.
Virgie would have known the kids in the class that donated the trophy case and surely walked past it every day.
She graduated in 1928 and started a four year attendance at Southwest Missouri Teachers' College (later to become Southwest Missouri State, then Missosuri State University). With three of those four years occurring during the depression and her parents encouraging her with moral support but able to offer little in the way of financial help, she worked for room and board while she attended college.
Her first two positions were at Fairview teaching John Q. Hammons among others, then at Wilks School near Verona teaching Claude K. Hulen, an inventor in the field of photoengraving and also instrumental in developing a system that reads bar codes.
After marrying C. H. King, she spent the next few years raising their son Don, working in her church and cooking in the cafeteria at Lowell School.
In 1949, Virgie returned to her alma mater as the librarian and “study hall keeper.” This new position teaching library science required a return to college. In1950, attending summers, she started at Pittsburg Teachers' College in Kansas, graduating in 1955.
She taught in Aurora for 26 years serving as Dean of Girls, cheerleader and pep club sponsor and sponsor for Library Club and eventually all classes in addition to serving on many committees and receiving a multitude of honors.
In 1975, when Virgie retired, over 2,000 students had come under her caring influence. One former student's memory of Virgie King says it well, “She really cared about the students, ready to help them at any time and sometimes serving as liason between the student and school. She was a student advocate before it was a paid position.”
When the old high school's furnishings were auctioned off this summer, that antique trophy case was in the bunch. When the other bidder found out that it was the Aurora Historical Society trying to buy and keep it at home, he let them have it at roughly half of what it would have brought. Aurora was the recipient of the kindness of a stranger.
The Aurora Historical Society paid for the case with a bequest from the estate of Virgie Mae Hilton King. The true tribute to Virgie King lives on in all the lives she touched. But, when we see the case, we think of her again.
