The road from De Leon High School to State Championships has been traveled through the years by students in literary events as well as athletics.  Behind each of these successful student efforts will be found supportive family, friends, and most often a coach who dedicated much extra time to that student.  The following is a remembrance of one such coach who for forty years believed in her students potential to win it all at State!

   “A, Semi, S, L, D, K, F, J, G, H” sharply toned and sometimes accompanied with the quick slap of a ruler in the open palm of the teacher herself was the all familiar warm up up which led typing students for forty years toward the goals of learning a skill and performing that skill well enough to win prizes.  Any of you readers who took typing or shorthand at De Leon High School from the 1940’s until 1976 already know this speaks of Allene Weaver Box’s classes.

     Many of her students feared that their class would be the unfortunate ones to break the chain of 32 district typing teams that won district championships.  Sometimes the three member team did not always have a first place winner but would average much higher than other schools and thus win as a team.  Most often however, the first place in typing and shorthand was won at the district level by a De Leon team member.

     Mrs. Box, from her first years of teaching at Comyn, before coming to De Leon in 1944, was already winning with students from her typing, shorthand, general business, commercial arithmetic and bookkeeping classes which she taught.

   At Comyn she recalled that the superintendent had a particular interest in the annual faculty play which was presented for the public. She even thought that perhaps faculty was sometimes selected for their potential dramatic talent.

    That dramatic flair was certainly an asset for the future University Interscholastic League (UIL) coach not only on stage but also in classes and contests.  No football coach has ever more vehemently questioned the call of an official than a UIL literary event coach when she or he thinks their team has been treated unfairly.  Mr. Box’s classroom was also a place where an enthusiastic squeal was frequently heard when a student did particularly well on an assignment.  Who would ever forget that feeling of accomplishment when a typing assignment was finally accepted with that required “two errors or fewer.”  That proved to be an almost insurmountable hurdle on some longer lessons!  Mrs. Box reminisced that the only student she ever had that never had a rewrite was Jim Golden.  Her other favorite in class typing effort was done by another muscular football player who labored diligently on his typing assignment the day before the 1975 State Championship football game.  His efforts were turned in at the end of class, and he had typed an unassigned but effective 100 times “Beat Schulenburg”.  The goal to make lessons meaningful to students had inadvertently been met.

   Business classes, Allene felt, were the most rewarding to teach.  She graduated from the University of Texas in 1937 with a degree in home economics but her first teaching assignment was for business studies and she never changed.  Mrs. Box felt that more than 2,000 students must have learned skills under her instruction which they took sometimes directly from her classes and entered the business world in locations through out the United States and internationally.

     She coached a total of almost 100 students who went beyond the district level in UIL events and were participants and winners at the regional and state level.  State contestants numbered fourteen in typing and six in shorthand.  She coached three state champions in typing and one in shorthand.  Among the State Champions are: Becky Heickman 1969 Class A Typing, Beverly Fisher (Stewart) 1968 Class A Typing,      Elizabeth Hodges (Sharp) 1962 Class AA Typing, and Peggy Thorpe (Otwell) 1965 Class A Shorthand.

    One former contestant, Ann Harvey (Biggerstaff) placed second at state in typing in 1966 and in shorthand in 1967.  Ann went on to teach business studies at Lake Travis High School near Austin.  Kathy Gray was another shorthand student who placed at state.

    Some of the students that Mrs. Box took to State included: Rosalou Short, Kerry Short, Mackie Brumbelow, Peggy Turner, Maedell Goates, Sharon Wiseman, Wilma Sparkman, Henry Van Terrill, Donnie Nowlin, Thomas Leal and Sammy Holland.  High ranking regional contestants included nancy Roch, Sharon Nowlin, Nancy Rowland, Nell Kay, Paul Roch, Tina Walker, Pat Donahue, Jimmy Farley, Donnie Skaggs, Naomi Carey, Jane Pair, Lola Wayne Pair, Patricia Morgan, Martha Morgan, Jo Helen Railsback and Ronnie Nowlin.

    Allene retired in the spring of 1976.  For years she had carried a variety of coaching tools such as stop watches, typing music, typewriters, books and stands for many miles from De Leon to contest in towns in whatever district De Leon participated and then on to Denton, Lubbock and that desired destination of Austin.  Who could forget those drives with Mrs. Box?

    Many of her teams won at the time when schools regardless of size, competed in a single group.  One memory which she cherished and recalled with a tiny smile on her face was when her students would overhear other coaches assure their teams that there was “not much competition there” referring to the De Leon teams.  One of her coaching habits was to have typing teams warm up very slowly, before contest, which certainly disguised their abilities.  Shorthand students were routinely given dictation in classes at speeds which exceeded the UIL contest speed so that dictation would seem slower to the contestant in a meet.  She began looking for the next potential UIL winner during the very first days of the school year.

    At the time this article was written (December 1994) Allene still resided at her home near De Leon where she was recuperating from a broken foot and knee.  Neither were performing as well as her former contestants.  She was as optimistic as she ever was in her classes.

    Strong cometitiors and the tradiion of winning is part of the history of De Leon High School.  With much pride, the pictures of state winners in UIL sports and literary events line the walls of the entracne hall in De Leon High School today to remind all who view them that there is much pride in being a Bearcat Winner!

      This article appeared in the November-December 1994 issue of The Messenger .  It was written by Nancy Weaver Brown.  Information for this article came from an interview with Mrs. Box and excerpts from a November 1975 Stephenville Empire-Tribune article by Nell Rose Mohon.  Allene Weaver Box was the daughter of Stella Ross Weaver a 1903 graduate, a niece of Bertha Ross the longtime teacher in De Leon, the sister of Sam Weaver and mother of Hadley Scott.

     Webmaster’s note:  About 1:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, James Richardson came in late to Mrs. Box’s bookkeeping class after being sent to town to pick up something for another teacher.  As he closed the door he asked “Did you hear that they shot at Kennedy over in Dallas.”  Her class was the first in De Leon High School to learn of the Kennedy assassination.

    

Allene Weaver Box