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"Application for rle entary School Teaching"
Barbara H. Shepard
I ran born in/a small tov» called Kiukiang, in tha Kiangsi
Province of China. Earliest memories are of a beloved Chinese
amah with tiny bound feat* a father who returned from month
long itinerant preaching trips around the China e countryside
on a roaring moibvcycle,   and a beautiful, Vibrant mother telling
my two brothers, my baby sister and me wonderful taleg of Tier
father's colorful life a: a yivevhoht  captain in Mobile, Alabama.
She had met my fa her, an earnest young nan of Pennsylvania
far stock, in theological seminary, while she was in nurse's
training in New York.  They sailed for China at Iethodist
missionaries in 1915.
then on furlough to the United States the year I was
jiv , Father nearly died of sleeping s\ckness. His tremendous
will power and -other's OUTsing pulled him through, and we
returned to China.  He no longer was,able to take the physical
strain of itinerant mission v/ork, so he was "loaned" to the
terleafl Bible Society as regional secretary in Pelping. We
moved, there th:? year I was ei nt.
Mother had taught us at home, so I started formal
schooling in third grade at the Peking American School, a
twelve-grade day school,  y school mates vere international:
Chinese, Japanese, White Russian, Germar, Persian, English,
Eurasian, Australian, etc.  The only prerequisite in relation
to nationality was that English be spo en in the home.  Our
classes were based on current American, curriculum standards,
t 0 classes to a room.  Chinese tore offered along 'ith French
and Gev  an language study, and they vere taafeht throughout all
the grades.  ith the exception of my eighth grade year, which
vas spent in Princeton, Not- Jersey, I re fit through school at
Peking American School end graduated rith a cla s of seven
students in 1936.
I took violin lessons for years from an intense Russian
\;ho tore his hair in dramatic despair because I wouldn't
practice enough.  Girl oc  uting was very important, -or our
active troop WSJ led by the American Ambassadorfs wife*  She,
with Mother, inspired me to the distinction of attaining the
first Golden Eaglet sward in North China.  There is I snail
metal plaeque to this effect on a tree in the school yard, if
the Red Chinese have not destroyed it!
I took great delight in school dramatics, and played on
the girls' basketball teal .  a all i<:e skated on the Summer