![]() Magic Mirror, tell me today, did all my friends have fun at play?’ I’d look through the mirror and I’d be looking at the children and I’d say ‘I see Nancy, and Gary has such a big smile and John’s here, too.’ Sometimes mothers would write me to say their child was home sick and I’d see them in my Magic Mirror and I learned to say ‘There’s Bobby, and it looks like Bobby is feeling better today.’”īobby may have been feeling better, but by the mid-70s local children’s programs were in bad shape. “The Magic Mirror would start out silvery and as I’d say ‘Romper Bomper Stomper Boo. And when that happened, well, then nearly everything afterwards seemed sort of anticlimactic. With that, it was time for the grand finale.įew things in life rival the anticipation of waiting for Miss Nancy to pick up her glittery Magic Mirror and actually see and say hello to kids at home. ![]() With the end of the schoolday approaching, Miss Nancy’s students (who had auditioned for their two-week engagements) would say a prayer and then their prayers would be answered when Miss Nancy brought out cookies and milk. Eyes look up, don’t look down, keep that basket off the ground.’” Music,’ and the music would start and I’d sing, ‘See me stand so straight and tall, I won’t let my basket fall. “We’d walk with baskets on our head and I’d say ‘All right, Mr. Music (also known as future anchor Ben Aycrigg), Miss Nancy would have her students join her in activities and singalongs. Music was also part of the morning, and with a cue to Mr. I’m a Romper Room do-bee, a do-bee all day long.’” Don’t-bee selfish.’ To reinforce these lessons, Miss Nancy would sing ‘I always do what’s right, I never do anything wrong. Do-Bee and Don’t-Bee, the ying and yang of Romper Room, gave children sage advice such as ‘Do-bee generous. The romper stompers were just tin cans and string.”Ĭrafts and games paved the way for life lessons. We always tried to do something that the child at home could do with us. We’d ride around on our stick horses, and if you didn’t have a stick horse at home, you could use a broomstick. We’d sit down and I’d say, ‘Guess what we are going to do today?’ We had physical games and coloring games and did our numbers. Each morning, live five days a week, a jack-in-the-box popped up as the class opened with a cheerful “It’s time for Romper Room School!” With that, Miss Nancy would call class into session with the pledge of allegiance and a variety of kindergarten games. Over the next fifteen years as the Class of 1960 graduated from Romper Room and prepared to graduate from college, Miss Nancy kept her classroom insulated from the turmoil of Vietnam and Watergate and assassinations by staying true to a curriculum that made an impression on her junior viewers. “When I went back with the others, we played through an actual show and since I had watched it with my children, I was playing just like I was playing with my kids. “That’s what made it so easy for me,” says Miss Nancy. “But at the time there was a man named Mark Barker at the station who had interviewed someone who said ‘If you really believe in something, it will come true.’ I met Mark in the hall and I said, ‘I’m going to get this job because I really believe it will come to pass,’ and sure enough it did.”īefore it did, however, a half-dozen candidates were called back for an audition. “There were some real beautiful model types at the audition,” recalls Miss Nancy, today a refined and youthful 76-year-old. Although Miss Nancy may have been daunted by some of her high fashion competitors, her sincerity and inner beauty helped her level the playing field. ![]() Then again, so did 149 other Orlando women who had designs on the vacancy. When her friend and then teacher Miss Barbara decided to abdicate, Miss Nancy figured that her background as a teacher, singer, mother, and part-time viewer would make her a perfect fit. In 1960, she was raising two children who were tuned into the pacing and classroom etiquette of Romper Room. And the lessons, sincere and lasting, were the mirror image of Nancy Stillwell, the teacher of Romper Room School from 1960 to 1975.Ī housewife in Orlando, she had left behind her first career as a teacher for grades 1-8 in a one-room schoolhouse in southeast Nebraska. To be sure, this wasn’t a program dependent on technicolor graphics and nanosecond cuts. Her classroom, the studio of WDBO’s Channel 6, opened its doors to every interested pre-schooler and kindergartener. ![]() Teaching with equal measures of patience, encouragement, learning, and love, Miss Nancy was Orlando’s favorite kindergarten teacher. ![]() In the dozen years before college a few hundred teachers will drift in and out of your life and, a dozen years after, you’ll look back and remember that only a handful really stood out.įor tens of thousands of baby boomers, Miss Nancy stood above them all. ![]()
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