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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 24, 1926)
PAGE 3 THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN LOCAL SUPT. HARWOOD HALL The past winter has been the mildest for many years. No snow, no ice. Mr. Downie and John Dexter motored to Seattle on Thursday in the interest of the school. A new reading room at Mitchell Hall is proving to be popular with the boys in that building. On Account of Disability He Retires After Forty Years’ Service. The question of the hour is who will eat the “Song Cake,” the “Yell Cake,” and the “Poem Cake” in the class contests today? The choir and octette girls appeared recently in new uniforms. They look natty in their red pleated skirts, red jackets and white blouses. The Octette Girls, accompanied by Mrs. Turney, rendered a musical program at the I. O. O. F. meet ing in Salem last Wednesday night. Mr. Bent and Capt. Stacy attended a banquet at the Elks’ Club on Monday evening. Many noted scout leaders, both National and State, were present. The Junior nurse girls went to the train on Thurs day morning to bid farewell to Dr. Collard, whose beneficial and cheerful services have helped Chemawa so much. A call for cross-country runners was made last Sunday and quite a number turned out and will pre pare to run against the Washington High School team of Portland in March. Clifford McLeod and Capt. Stacy attended a banquet of the Salem Post of Reserve Officers of the U. S. Army at the Spa Tuesday evening. Clifford gave the oration, “The Spirit of 1917,” at this meeting and the hearty applause given him by the Officers spoke volumes in appreciation of his selection and splendid delivery of it. Dr. J. R. Collard, special physician for the U. S. Indian Field Service, has been at Chemawa since the first of the year. He has removed the tonsils of 264 pupils, and treated about 40 cases of trachoma, besides a number of other operations performed. The doctor is a splendid organizer and an expert in his profession. He left last week to go to Fort Hall, Idaho. Our hos pital has been a busy place for some time. The joy of the fish dinner referred to in another column was the informality of cooking and serving it in family style by the Sigma Phi Delta girls them selves and entirely planned and managed by them. Each year the different classes composing the society are given prizes for excellence of composition and ren dition of Sigma songs and such songs being added to the book of the society songs. This annual meeting around the festive board is a joy to those participating. The spirit manifested at this dinner is obvious to an onlooker that our high ideals prevail and will do much in the future lives of the girl members. Mr. Hall entered the Indian Service as superinten dent at Senecca, Shawnee and Wyandotte Boarding School, on Jan. 1, 1886, in what was then Indian Ter ritory. He has served as superintendent at the Ogalalla Boarding School, Pine Ridge, S.D.; Cheyenne Boarding School, Okla.; Phoenix, Arizona; Perris, Calif.; Riverside, Calif.; and during the past ten years at Chemawa. Supt. Hall leaves Chemawa at the very heighth of its prosperity. During a visit here last September Con gressman Cramton said that in Chemawa and Supt. Hall he had found the peer of them all. Supt. Hall and his good wife and helpmeet will live in Los Angeles. Many letters have been received from friends of Mr. Hall, in the Service and out of it, since the under ground wires seemed to have carried the news of his approaching retirement on account of broken health, expressing regret at the necessity of his retiring from the Indian Service. Those letters are all very compli mentary of the work that he has done. We are quot ing from one which in a way expresses the sentiment of all of them, as follows: A man of his stamina, supported by his unconquer able spirit, does not yield, at his age, to any stress of business life. His decline is a most positive proof of the terribly harassing conditions and requirements under which a man must work to win a measure of success in the Indian Service. Of course, those who are willing to be content with a mediocre accomplish ment which arouses neither the criticism or condem nation of others in the work, for its poor quality, nor the envy and persecution of those of equal rank, by reason of its outstanding excellence—such persons will not wear out, will not feel the strain, and will receive the same financial return. The same qualities and abilities and years of service which Mr. Harwood Hall has given to the Indian Ser vice if on record in the field of business would place him high among the country’s best, and—what is more important just now—he would be at the top with from ten to twenty years of well-earned active powers ahead of him. But after all, isn’t it wonderful that money and a place in the “Who’s Who” are not the only com pensations for honest effort? The most gratifying re ward for any struggle is in one’s own personal con sciousness of having at least partly succeeded in his realization of an ideal. Mr. Hall’s vision was the motive power of his work. In his memories he has a fund of knowledge of many, many of these visions be coming real; he can meet them every day; he can know that his contribution to the improvement of the world is true and vital. We have a conviction that when a person has in true faith and unselfishness created in another person a worthy ideal he has breathed into their creations a “breath of life” and is immortal. There are no words which express just what could be said of Mr. Hall. If there be a kind of heart-to- heart radio, with all static eliminated, it will be under stood by the hosts of friends of Harwood Hall, who is retiring after a period of more than forty years of honest labor as superintendent in our United States Indian School work.
