Eldon and Julia (Borton) Cooling lived in Milford Twp during the 1942-'43 school year with the oldest 10 of their 12 children: Charles `Art' (`47), twins Garol and Darol (`49), LaVonne (`50), Vernon (`53), Dale (`54), Lloyd (`55), Lyle (`57), Dallas (`59), Margaret (`61), Dwayne (`69) and Gary (`72).
The Cooling family lived in the very southwest corner of Sec 36 from March 1942 to March of 1943. Within a year after leaving Milford the twins contracted Scarlet Fever and missed a year of school. They had been in the class of 1948 but graduated at Clemons in 1949. That summer Clemons 17-0 finished runner-up to Davenport in the finals of the IHSAA State Baseball Tournament; Garol was the left fielder for the team with a 17-1 record year.
Seven Cooling children rode the bus that year, which was the most of any one family at any one time in the history of Milford Twp. Eldon Cooling served as a bus driver in 1942-1943. On one day, when he picked up his own youngsters, the twins, Garol and Darol, who had been playing with a skunk, smelled so strong of skunk that Eldon, about a mile from home, made them get off the bus and walk back home.
None graduated from Milford Twp but all remember their school experience and learning to play ball and be competitive. Charles, `Art', was a career teacher. He went to Iowa Teachers College the summer he graduated and secured a rural school job for fall. However since he did not turn 18 until October he actually hired a sub to teach for him until he could get his teach certification in Oct. He accomplish his Bachelors and Masters Degrees through summers, Saturdays and night school. Art taught continuously except for the year he took a sabbatical to finish his degree. After his one- room school experience he taught math at Troy Mills, Cedar Rapids, and Kirkwood Community College until he retired.
Another point of interest was when the twins served in the Marines they brought a friend, Walt Walters, from Kentucky home with them after their experience in the Marines, he later became their bother-in-law. He married their sister LaVonne the following January lst.
The family recalls the excitement of a plane crash and a mail carrier flipping his vehicle spilling out the mail within a week. They were asked to help pick up this official US Mail on a very blistering cold day.
Bus drivers page 179, othe information pages 201 and 232,
The Oliver Durbys lived in the very northeast of Sec 10 of Milford Twp for a time adjacent to the farm owned by his brother, Peder. The Oliver Durby farm is known by most folks who lived in Milford Twp around the fifties as the Reinhart place. Oliver Durby 1851-1924 had moved to Roland by 1914. The children would have gone to School Number Two which would have been about 3/4 mile to the west which, for a while, was known as the Durby School.
Tosten, the tall lad in the back row above, homesteaded in Colorado and died there at age 37 of a ruptured appendix in 1921. For a very good account of this, and many more stories of the Durbys, see Jeanette Sansgard Larson's fine book at the Story City Library.
The Michael Tendall Family Front: Michael, Dorothy `47 (Williams), Christine (Mortvedt). Back: Grace `35 (Floyd Twedt), Leonard `37, Raymond `43, Katherine `37 (Hemer). They lived in the NW of Sec 11 and had moved there in March of 1927 when Leonard was in the third grade and Grace in the fourth. The photo was taken when Leonard went into the Service for WWII.