Miss Smyly's kindergarten was first school for many in Morgan City

How many local residents remember a home located on the perimeter of Lawrence Park as your first kindergarten? As it was the only kindergarten in the area for many years, quite a few of you would have begun your schooling here at Miss Smyly’s.
Hazel Smyly was born to Louis and Bertha Smyly in 1893, the middle of three sisters. Hazel never married, but she touched the lives of a large number of the population of Morgan City.
According to The Attakapas Register, schools in Louisiana opened and closed intermittently during the late 1800s. This was because of a lack of funds, a lack of books and a lack of teachers.
As a child, Hazel attended one that had opened in 1877 and was run by Miss Lizzie Benson. She remembers her elementary school being a little red house next to Pharr Chapel Methodist Church on Federal Avenue.
Miss Hazel’s high school years began on the second floor of City Hall. Morgan City Grammar School had become overcrowded, so in 1908, the upper grades were moved into City Hall while a new school was being constructed on the corner of Federal Avenue and Brashear. Hazel exclaimed, “I’ll never forget ... how we could look into the jail house on the first floor” on our way to and from school.
Hazel was a member of the second class that graduated from the new location. That building on the corner of Federal Avenue and Brashear that housed her high school was demolished in 1973.
A picture shows her with her class, seventh from the left with a long braid. In honor of her graduation, Hazel wrote the class poem titled, “Purple and Gold,” as those were Morgan City’s colors in 1912. She was 16 years old; only 5 feet 3 inches tall; of slender build; and nicknamed “99,” a reference to her weight, when she graduated from 10th grade.
Her college career consisted of several months of study at SLI in Lafayette, now the University of Louisiana. She attended classes only until she could pass the exam that certified she was qualified to teach.
She taught in Mermentau, Franklin, Centerville, Houma and French Settlement before traveling to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to complete her degree and to study dance.
In 1921, Hazel was living in Pennsylvania taking courses at Byron W. King’s School of Oratory. She obtained her masters’ degree in two years instead of three, and then worked in Illinois for four years offering classes and private lessons in Voice Culture, Expression, Physical Culture, Dramatics, and Story Telling.
During her summer months she would attend the Vestof School of Dancing in New York.
While she was working in Illinois, her mother asked that she return to Morgan City, and, in 1921, the front living room of her parents’ house became her kindergarten classroom. A second front door was added to the home so that students could enter her school without bothering the family.
Picnic tables and benches became the furnishings for her first classroom, and students were charged $3 per month for tuition.
For dance lessons, $1.50 per month was the price. Every day, Hazel had to clear out the classroom so that dance lessons could be held.
One woman who attended dance remembers returning home crying to her mother, “I need 3 yards, and we only have a front yard and a back yard.”
She had not listened closely enough to hear that Miss Hazel was referring to the amount of fabric needed for costumes.
In 1930, Hazel took in her sister’s two children, Virgie and Jack. She added rooms to her home for the children. In that year, she held the first Hazel Smyly Kindergarten Mardi Gras Court with niece Virgie as queen and Jack as the court cryer. He was described in the newspaper as “one of the Morgan City’s “most talented youngsters” and Virgie as “radiantly beautiful.”
Miss Smyly taught kindergarten and dance classes for more than 60 years in Morgan City. So many of us remember her, and like her or not, she definitely made an impression on all who passed through the doors of her home.
In 1979, former Mayor C.R. Brownell declared May 27 to be Hazel Smyly Day in recognition of her dedication to the youth of Morgan City. So, when May rolls around each year, celebrate Hazel on her day. She certainly deserves it!