There is quiet hope and caution in the hearts of Middletown area mothers and fathers whose sons are miles but perhaps only weeks away in North Korean prison camps. There are six known prisoners of war from this area. The parents know that only a few sick and wounded prisoners are certain to be exchanged, though the latest Red proposals hint a willingness to exchange all prisoners. The missing men from this area have not been reported either sick or wounded. Yet the parents wait patiently and hopefully. MRS. ALTHA Hamilton, 1303 Woodlawn Ave., mother of Pvt. Roland A. Hamilton, 25, listened to the morning news broadcast very carefully on Wednesday last week and then said, “But they’re only going to exchange 600 prisoners. That’s an awfully small number. You’d think there’d be many more. She spoke very quietly and did not look at her listener. “I’m hopeful for his return,” she said.

Middletown will not let its more than 300 June high school graduates jump blindly into this sometimes difficult world. For years the schools, industries and employment service have been cooperating to give youngsters proper vocational and educational guidance and placement. Middletown high school offers such a program under the direction of Miss Helen Hartman. Her offices, filled with vocational pamphlets, college catalogues, and bulletins from trade, business, art. music and nursing schools, are always available to interested students. In addition, Miss Hartman tests students to determine intelligence, abilities and interests. Seniors who are considering college are also given the Ohio State University psychological examination...

Foolishly, I ate a full meal before Middletown Y-Teens, representing the natives of seven different world areas, shoved films, dances, exhibits, songs, records, favors and food — mostly food — at me during their World Fellowship Party Thursday night at the high school. The girls had spent a month studying the different countries and preparing the activities. They w ere directed by Miss Veda McCray, faculty advisor. Miss McCray suggested that I move through the different rooms and survey world fellowship. It is food, I found out, which ties the world together. At “Holland,’’ which featured a film of the country recently taken by one of the leaders, Y-Teens served chocolate milk and “Holland" cheese. Holland cheese tasted strangely like American cheese...

One of Middletown's few WAC’s 19-year-old Rosalind Brewer, came back to town last week and fried her own hamburger at the Bowl-Mor restaurant where she worked as a waitress before she enlisted in the army. "It seems like old times" she said as the meat sizzled on the griddle, "same people and everything." Rosalind, who has just returned from Fort Knox, Ky. and will leave for Fort Sheridan, Ill., this week, said, “I like the WACs. I have no complaints. Nothing hurt but the shots they gave me.” In fact Rosalind liked her training so much that she wouldn’t mind taking basic all over again. “I don’t mind KP,” she said with a smile, “I can wash a garbage can as good as anybody in the army." This is the first time, she confided, that Sergeant Al Walters, local recruiting officer, has heard of anyone coming back from training with an "I'll do it again" attitude...

Harry E. Hadley and J. Howard Stalker, candidates for positions on the Board of Education, today announced they will support the board when it asks for a tax levy in November. The board said on June 3 that it would need the additional funds to adjust wages and salaries of school personnel. A citizens’ committee report released that week had disclosed that, while future income will be sufficient to operate the school system without a deficit it will not be enough to provide an adequate increase for the 300 school employees. The board said that determination of the amount of the requested levy would come only after detailed study. Hadley, mill manager of Gardner Board and Carton Company, said. “If we are to get outstanding teachers and administrative workers and if we are to retain the many fine school people we now have, we must be able to pay them fairly...”

In April, 1921, a preacher, forced by illness to give up his congregation, came to Middletown High School at the request of Principal Wade E. Miller, his college roommate. The Rev. Jerome C. Schulz was to fill in for a few months, but he stayed for 32 years until the legal retirement age of 70 pushed him out of the schools this June and back into preaching. MHS Bible teacher since 1924 and dean of boys since 1929, the Rev. Schulz this month took over full-time duties as pastor of First United Presbyterian Church in Middletown. The retired teacher talks easily and fondly about his years at the high school. His most pleasant memory is of his Bible classes. They were the realization of a young man’s dream. The course was unique in Ohio, and the Rev. Schulz doubts whether there was one like it anywhere in the United States...

Sixth graders at Garfield School are taught by one-third of the city's staff of male elementary teachers. Since the corps numbers no more than three, however, the boys and girls are receiving the normal volume of instruction. Their teacher J. W. Riley Saylor is a man and thus, through none of his own design, possesses traits that are peculiar in the overwhelmingly female elementary teaching set-up. Saylor for example is interested in scientific gadgets, woodwork and Boy Scout crafts, At the same time, he is not too involved in art, music and home economics. A maze of bells, circuits, magnets, candles, sockets, plugs, fuses, cells, screw drivers, switches, bulbs and other devices that interest Saylor occupy prominent spots in his classroom...

Although the minds of men bounce on different levels, all walk and eat in the same physical world. The business of schools is to train youngsters to take the best places their abilities will allow in this world. Most of the information the public gleans from schools concerns the vast body of boys and girls who act in plays or debate important questions or learn stenography or star in basketball or lead cheers or run for office or pass and flunk courses. There is, however a smaller group of students whom the schools must mold. They may be kind and earnest and strong and gentle but their academic achievement measures lower than the marks of the pupils with whom the public usually is most concerned...

Middletown schools are staffed with teachers who have less training but more experience than the average faculty of city systems in Ohio. Differences however, between Middletown and the mean are slight. In fact, for cities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 both Middletown's training and experience are a bit above average...

Fighting For Dog Domination - Mr. and Mrs. Robert Benge, 1236 Ellen Dr., are trying to shove a sturdy, little dog that ‘‘eats like a pig” high on the list of America's favorite canine cuties. The fellow whom they champion is the Pug Dog. At the turn of the century he was the darling of dog society. But the past 50 years have seen the Pomeranian and Pekinese pluck him off that perch in the toy dog or 15-puund class. The Pug last year was 28th in line behind the Beagle, America s favorite dog. That, the Benges believe, is too far back...

Seniors at Middletown High and in fact, high schools all over the nation have more scholarship school opportunities than the boys and girls who went to school 10 years ago. Most of the additional funds, Miss Helen Hartman, supervisor of guidance at MHS, explains, comes from industries who are trying to fill the nation’s need for engineers, scientists and managers...

Two elementary school principals recently sat young and stiff and bored at the final session of a Middletown conference of their southwestern Ohio colleagues. The usual atmosphere of such meetings drowsily seeped into the room, causing the fellows to puncture the speeches with comments that were nasty although set in a proper tone... Hugh Butler, acting superintendent of Middletown schools then was introduced to the crowd, which greeted his appearance with soft, fingertip applause...

Knighthood in Flower in CinemaScope - Chalk up merrie olde englande as a spot that may soon replace the wilds of Wyoming as the center of celluloid popularity. Hollywood recently has dished out alongside a steady diet of westerns, “Ivanhoe ,” “Knights of the Round Table ," and now “Prince Valiant,” which in CinemaScope gains its play at the Colonial Theater this week. The ingredients are clear...

The Movies in Perspective - II - (Second Of A Series) - "Gentes and laitymen , fullstoppers and semicolonials, hybreds lubberds! Eins within a space and a wearyside space it was ere wohned a Mookse” begins a section of a well-known book written in the 20th century. The selection is from James Joyce's Finnegan’s Wake.’’ Written in English, the book’s hundreds of pages are composed of a stream of these nearly unintelligible sentences. Joyce attempted to offer the world a picture of a man's mind while the fellow was asleep and dreaming. What would CinemaScope and 3D look like if movies tried to do the same thing that Joyce did about 20 years ago?‍

The Supreme Court's decision yesterday to outlaw racial segregation in the nation's public schools probably will not affect Booker T. Washington School in Middletown, R.H. Snyder, president of the Board of Education, predicted this morning. 'I can't see how the decision would affect the school in any way, "the president stated. 'School boards in Ohio have a right to set districts. The problem is a districting one in Middletown..

Middletown schools, unlike the overstuffed halls of learning all over the nation, are expected to have more vacant seats in September 1954 than at the beginning of the current school year. This local quirk does not mean that baby production in Middletown fell off greatly during 1949 while it was booming throughout the United States. Less five-year-olds than usual will enter kindergarten in 1954 because of a change in Board of Education bookkeeping...

A local American Legion committee is attempting to enlist public support for a drive that will keep “horror” comic books out of the hands of Middletown youngsters. Donald Alstaetter, chairman of Post 218’s youth activities committee, wants leaders of community organizations to join him in setting up a program that would not allow local merchants to sell juveniles these books...

For the third consecutive year a group of area teachers will spend part of their summer vacation learning techniques of pushing schools closer to community life, especially the industrial segment. Twenty-seven Middletown and Lemon Township teachers have signed up for Miami University’s community resources workshop this year.

Corporal punishment in Middletown schools is strictly taboo - unless the little "monster" deserves it and his parents approve of the whacking. The school board's official policy on the matter states that bodily punishment can be used when discipline, in the opinion of both parent and teacher, can be secured in no other way. Only during the past year has that been a board policy. Before that, however, it was the practical method in the school system, Acting Superintendent of Schools Hugh Butler points out...

Booker T. Washington School, created in a spirit of goodwill about 36 years ago, has bloomed into a difficult spot in the social landscape of this community. The Supreme Court’s recent decision to outlaw racist segregation in public schools has prompted the local National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People to renew their effort to make the 17th Avenue building a mixed institution...