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Note: PHONPL2-8372 Harry Leroy Thomspon worked with his father as an iceman when he was young. Before the invention of refrigerators, everyone had ice boxes. The ice box required emptying the drip pan. The iceman didn't have to knock on doors, a 10 x 10 card placed in the window would tell him what size piece of ice to deliver. Kids would wait for him to make a delivery, and then jump on the truck to get slivers of ice. Harry had an ulcer. Thoughts of Harry take me back to a Baltimore landmark, The Bromo Seltzer Tower. It was named for a Javanese volcano, Mt. Bromo. The maker of Bromo Seltzer build a copy of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence Italy. On the top was a fifty one foot tall reproduction of a blue Bromo Seltzer bottle that rotated twice a minute. When it was lit up at night, the bottle could be seen all the way to the Eastern Shore. It spun from 1911 to 1936 when the company moved to Pennsylvania. But the four clock faces still remains to this day, where instead of numbers, it
says B_R_O_M_O_S_E_L_T_Z_E_R. Harry LeRoy Thompson attended Francis Scott Key School. He was enrolled there in September 1918. FRANCIS SCOTT KEY SCHOOL #76 The first school was erected at Towson and Cuba Streets. Later the school moved to Hull and Clement Streets. Dr. Esther Loring Richards, in writing of the school in this period, describes it as a dilapidated building on the edge of a barren waste, with several classes meeting in an abandoned building across the street. About 1919, this building was wrecked by fire, and the school was finally moved to its present location. During its final months of location at Hull and Clement Streets, the school was studied by Dr. Richards, who
published her findings in a paper "Some Adaptive Difficulties Found in School Children", which was published by the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, Inc., in 1920. Dr. Richards commented on the fact that while she received every cooperation from the Principal, Miss Persis K. Miller, who possessed "creative genius and common-sense understanding of human beings", and from the faculty. Nature, however, conspired to make her work more difficult, for there were three enforced school holidays, of from 2 to 8 weeks each, brought about by epidemics of influenza, the freezing and bursting of the school pipes, and finally the burn of the school itself. In the school year 1919-20, the school boasted 1 kindergarten class, with 50 children, 1 teacher, and 1 assistant teacher. There were 44 pupils in the 5th grade; 140 in the 6th grade, 16 in the 7th grade, and 9 in the 8th grade. There were also special classes. Dr. Richards praised the school for its school bank, its classes for backward, defective, and tubercular children, the penny lunches, the very active Parent-Teacher Association, and for the way the school identified itself so completely with the community it served. Not only were academic subjects offered, but so were lessons in art, music, and vocational training, and attempts were made to help the parents solve some of their out-of-school problems. When time came for the new school to be built, the effort of the parents of Locust Point to obtain the best possible school and faculty were led by Miss Miller, the principal, and Mrs. William Brauernschmidt secretary of the Public School Association. The present school property embraces part of the land originally included in the estate known as The Vineyard, the mansion house of which stood on the south side of Fort Avenue, opposite Andre Street. Local residents believed a mysterious foreigner about built it. Little is known about him. In 1924, part of the Garden Wall was still standing. In 1924, when Locust Point and Fort Avenue were the subject of a two part article in the Sun of 1 June and 8 June1 by Emily Emerson Lantz, the school was known as the Industrial School #76. There were 1000 pupils enrolled. Such w
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