Those 70ish Girls

Jim Anderson, ’63

Mrs. Sorensen taught English at MHS for several years beginning in 1937, with a few years off to raise 2 children. Superintendent Gordon Diedtrich convinced her to come back to MHS in the fall of 1957 where she taught until moving to Presho after the 1961 school year.

It was early in my freshman year (1959) when Mrs. Sorensen stopped by my study hall desk shortly before school dismissed for the day. “Jimmy,” she said. “I think you would find this book interesting. She handed me Jim Bridger, Mountain Man by Stanley Vestal. I did find the book to my liking and thanks to Mrs. Sorensen and my mother, who when I had the mumps, had me read the condensed version of The Day Lincoln was shot, by Jim Bishop, I have been an avid reader ever since.

Maybe she saw some potential in the scrawny kid who lived across the alley from her home on Main Street, and who played with her son, Billy. I still recall visiting with her in the fall of 1963 as I was headed to college. I can still see that “You’ll find out soon enough smile on her face” as I told her I had everything all figured out-there was not much more anyone could teach me.

I recall a few of the highlights of the 2 years our class had Mrs. Sorensen for English. One “pop quiz” stands out because it was given the morning after we played basketball at Martin, which required us to leave immediately after school and arrive back in Murdo late. We had been assigned to read the first 25 pages of Ivanhoe. It was after midnight when I quickly read these pages. Our English class was the first class of the morning of the same day. We heard these dreaded instructions as soon as we walked into the classroom that morning. “Put your books away, take out a piece of paper, your name at the top-question number one. I got a few points that day but I could never catch up with those 2 Kinsley girls who also happened to be in my class. Mrs. Sorensen had us memorize Portia’s “Quality of Mercy” speech from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, countryman, lend me your ears” speech from  Julius Ceasar. I can still recite the last few lines of Thanatopsis, but I think it was where to put those commas in those compound sentences that gave me nightmares. And let’s not even talk about conjugating verbs or diagramming sentences. And I still remember my research paper on South Dakota’s ring necked pheasant.

Charles Francis’42 from Murdo Man, the memories of Charles Gordon Francis

An extremely important teacher in my high school years was Marge Swanson (later Sorensen). She pounded away teaching Shakespeare to a mostly unresponsive class and was equally energetic in all her English classes. She talked me into writing a sports column for the student section of the MURDO COYOTE (The town’s weekly newspaper) and she forced me to enter the school’s annual declamatory (oratorty) contest. I memorized a speech by Wendell Wilkie, a Republican presidential candidate, titled “Men Like War.” Compared to the piano concert debacle many years earlier, my rendition of Wilkie’s speech was an even greater disaster. I got stage fright, forgot line after line, and had to be constantly prompted from off stage by Miss Swanson. Who ever would have guessed that I would spend the later part of my life helping professional speech writers prepare material for their bosses. And to think it all started with a Murdo English teacher named Marge Swanson.