E.S. Richardson Elementary School

E.S. Richardson Elementary School is a fourth and fifth grade campus which serves the city of Minden, the seat of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana. The school opened in the 1949-1950 academic year, with Wayne Wynn Williams, Sr. (1917-2000),^[1] as the principal. It was originally known as East Side Elementary School but was renamed in 1955 for E. S. Richardson.^[2]

Richardson was the companion school to William G. Stewart Elementary School, named for former school board president William G. Stewart, which served the western side of Minden and also opened in 1949 and closed effective with the fall of 2011 under a parish realignment plan. Both schools were part of a post-World War II bond issue. Richardson school is located at 505 West Todd Street.^[3]

Originally from Leesville in Vernon Parish in western Louisiana, Williams switched positions in 1954 with John L. Cathcart (1895-1969),^[1] the principal of Minden High School. Cathcart, a South Carolina native, hence took over the principalship at Richardson, as Williams went to Minden High School.^[4]

The side of E.S. Richardson Elementary School from East Todd Street

Prior to the 2011 changes, Richardson offered all elementary grades and had nearly five hundred pupils.^[5] Richardson school is named for Edward S. Richardson (1875-1950), school superintendent of Bienville and then Webster parishes, and thereafter the president of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston in Lincoln Parish as well as a national spokesman on educational issues.^[6]

Richardson school is 56 percent white in enrollment^[7] though Minden became, in the 2000 census, a majority African American community.

Notable faculty and administrators

Elizabeth Ann Roberts, Richardson teacher from 1956 to 1967, is retired in Sterlington, Louisiana.

• Alfred E. Day (1898—1972), fifth grade teacher, businessman, and member of the Webster Parish School Board from 1964 to 1969^[8]
• Gertrude R. Alsobrook (1914—1994), first grade
• Martha Belton (born 1942), first grade, 1979-1988; gifted and talented, 1989-1998; fourth and fifth grades, 1998-2002
• Velma Jones Boggs (1916-2009), first grade, 1950s and 1960s
• Mary Braley (1906—1983), librarian
• Ruth Durrett Doyle (1920-1994), first grade
• Vasta S. Green (1908—2002), third grade
• Jarrell Francis "Jerry" Heard (1923—2010), fifth grade (early 1960s)
• Audrey Hortman (1907—1974), second grade
• Christine Sapp Hunt (1927—2005), former principal
• Gene Reynolds, science teacher; member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for District 10 since 2012
• Elizabeth Ann Roberts (born 1934), fourth grade (1956—1967); relocated to Ouachita Parish, retired 1991 and resides in the Fairbanks Community east of Sterlington
• Ronald D. Rhymes (born 1947), former principal
• Myrtis Saint (1904—1973), second grade
• Ruby W. Salmon (1904—1968), fifth grade
• Susanella Schoenbrodt (1901—1980), second grade, retired 1966^[9]
• Eva Grace Sutton (1907—-2000), third grade
• Dorothy Clyde Nelson Travis Atkinson (1925—2015), fourth grade; native of Lillie in Union Parish, contracted polio at eighteen months of age, highly-regarded pianist and singer^[10]
• Grace Turner Watson (1919—2002), sixth grade
• William Turner Watson (1948-2011), musician, educator, former principal; son of Grace Turner Watson^[11]
• Marie Chambers Winn (1902—1997), fourth grade

References