MONROE — For over 60 years, Rita Farris has been a teacher. She’s spent nearly all of that time in Green County. She’s taught in a high school setting at Juda; as a nighttime vocational teacher for what later turned into Blackhawk Technical College; and has taught piano lessons to children of all ages.

She’s also had to adapt quickly to changing technology use in the classroom. For example, when Rita was teaching business, the times were changing fast.

“In the spring we would have typewriters, and by the fall it was computers,” Rita said. “I had to get caught up to speed just enough in order to teach my students.”

She said she loves teaching so much, she would do it for free. Volunteering has long been a part of her life. She is the person in charge of funeral lunches at St. Victor Church/St. Clare of Assisi Catholic parish in Monroe.

“Volunteering is really an important mission,” Rita said. “There are some things you do in life, things that you work at or learn to do, that gives you a unique set of skills or understanding. I really enjoy volunteering.”

Her early years

A native of the West Bend area and graduate of Slinger High School, Rita hadn’t thought about going off to college until her business teacher laid a UW-Whitewater flier on her desk when she was a high school junior.

“It was a new adventure,” Rita said. “Very few of my family had gone to college. In fact, very few people around me went.”

She decided she wanted to attend UW-Whitewater, and spent the year after high school working to save money for college. Her first semester away from home was the hardest, but she got by thanks to having a roommate that had similar ideals and beliefs.

Her roommate was from Wisconsin Rapids and had a few brothers. One of the brothers asked Rita for her picture and address, so that he could take it to the Air Force with him and find an airman from Wisconsin that would want to be pen pals with her.

“Fat chance of that happening, I thought,” Rita said.

One airman did decide to write her, though. His name was Tom. For three years they wrote letters back and forth.

“Phone calls were expensive, and postage was cheap,” Rita said. 

The letters took time to reach one another, but after a while, they did start talking by phone. When it came time to meet, though, problems kept occurring. In order to travel, Tom had to fly on a particular plane. He wasn’t a pilot, instead working on the radio control side of the Air Force. 

“My friends told me to just forget about him — he wasn’t even real,” Rita said, laughing.

Only Tom was a real person. In fact, fresh out of college, Rita coincidentally took a job as a teacher in Tom’s hometown, where his dad was a member of the school board. They went on to get engaged, have eight children, and have been married for 58 years.

Once out of the Air Force, Tom spent a year working the night shift at a factory. He decided that wasn’t for him, and he wanted to become a teacher, like his father had been. The couple were living in Iowa at the time, and Tom decided to go to school at the former Green County Teacher’s College. Rita looked for a job nearby, and found one in Juda as a business teacher. After a year, the Green County Teacher’s College closed, and Tom enrolled at UW-Platteville.

Tragedy unfolds for the Juda Class of ‘67

She was also the advisor for the Juda school newspaper, The Judean, and was the advisor for the Juda senior Class of 1967. For four years, the Class of ’67 raised money for their senior class trip. The destination? New Orleans. Why? Because of its long history as a major American city, and its warm March weather.

The trip was to have two adult chaperones for the 33 students. Rita was in charge of the girls, while coach Frank Murphy was in charge of the boys. They wanted the students to get the most out of their trip, which included a curfew of 1 a.m. The pool in the hotel they were supposed to stay at was out of order, so the group was moved to a different location, the Hilton Inn, across the highway from the Kenner Louisiana Airport.

When they arrived at the hotel, Rita separated the girls into sets of four, with one of the four being the chairperson of the group to be in charge of the room key. The key that remained went to Rita and Tom.

Another task for Rita was to collect the curfew slips from each room, which would signal no one would leave the room for the rest of the night. At about 12:50 a.m. on March 30, 1967, Rita, in her nightgown and slippers, was ready to begin collecting curfew slips. Some of the students were still down at the pool, but nine of her girls were already in their rooms.

“I just heard this terrific sound. There’s no other way to describe it,” she said. “I just turned to Tom and said, ‘We need to get out of our room right now!’”

Tom, in his undershorts, left the room with Rita. Moments later, the room exploded. Part of the hotel had been blown away and was ablaze.

The apocalyptic scene came from a training exercise gone wrong. A pilot in a Delta Air Lines DC-8 jet was doing a test flight, simulating maneuvers with two of four engines out. While turning back to land at New Orleans International Airport, and in the air for less than 10 minutes, the jet dipped too low for control, clipping two houses, a truck, and the motel, raining fuel all around the motel lawn and building exterior, igniting almost instantly in a caravan of flames. The accident killed all six crew members and 12 others on the ground.

As emergency crews arrived on scene, the Juda group had nine students missing. All of which were girls on Rita’s first floor. 

“You hoped that they had gotten out, and were just dazed and wandering,” Rita said, “but such was not the case.”

After a few hours of waiting, survivors of the trip learned of the fate of their nine classmates, who were found huddled together in their motel bathroom, deceased. Later that morning, with many students in just swimming attire from the pool, authorities whisked away survivors to a nearby department store for replacement clothes which were paid for by a local Catholic charity and the American Red Cross. 

The group would take a train back to Chicago, and then traveled by bus for the final portion of the trip. It was the same way they had traveled to New Orleans just days before and full of excitement.

“We traveled by train and bus, because the kids were too scared to fly in a plane,” Rita said. “Everyone feared the return to Juda and having to see the distraught faces of families and friends as they returned with nine fewer students than they left with. We held nine funerals in three days — three each day. There were no extra counselors or therapists to help you get through it, and when the funerals were all done, we were all expected back at school the next day.” 

Some of her business classes were filled with underclassmen, so she was able to get through them. One advanced class of upperclassmen had just one remaining student. Instead of teaching in the same classroom filled with empty desks, she continued teaching that student in a small room near the main office.

For the rest of the spring, each school event that would normally be attended by all the seniors left nine chairs standing empty — the final band concert, awards ceremony, baccalaureate, and graduation.

The small community of about 300 people had been shaken to its core.

Finding a way to heal

Just a few years out of high school herself, she said the nine deceased girls — now known as the Nine Angels — were practically her own age. In the following years, she would hear a fire or emergency siren and freeze, as her mind was get taken back to that dreadful night. The tragedy hit further home when her own children eventually reached the same age. She then thought of the parents of the Nine Angels in a different way.

In 1967, when school got out for the summer, Rita was offered a job at a local bank, which was a pleasant change, she said. 

It was then that she started working on a healing project. So much mail was received at Juda — school, faculty, families, community. Many people from all over across the country and the world wanted to reach out with cards letters, postcards, telegrams, donations, and notes filled with thoughts, prayers, and support from people who cared. Rita felt all of these things needed to be seen by the nine families and the community. There was no newspaper in Juda, no single church that everyone attended, and no way to share these signs of caring unless all these items could be compiled into one source.

That was the start of her healing process. She decided to organize all and start typing with no way of knowing how many pages or hours it would take to accomplish that task.  She would work on her project before going to work at the bank, in the evenings, and every week-end, continuing into the next school year.  Almost a year and 298 pages later brought the project to completion. Everything had to be done by hand — duplicating each of the typed stencils, hole punching each page, and putting the pages in order to form a book.

Once she presented the book to the nine families, it became apparent there would need to be more copies made so other families and community members could have a keepsake to heal in their own time. Since she saved all the stencils, it was possible for her to fulfill all those requests as well.

Cards, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia dealing with the Juda tragedy are housed in a cabinet in the Juda Community Center and may be viewed by anyone upon request.

“This was my way of healing,” Rita said. “This was all me, and took up my time. This was what I had to do in order for me to heal.”

Throughout all the years, Rita has kept in touch with the Class of ’67. “It is a special bond that we share,” Rita said. At the 25-year reunion, the class members finally began to talk about the class trip tragedy for the first time.

In 2010, the class established a Nine Angels perpetual scholarship for Juda graduates in memory of the nine girls — We Remember our Nine Angels. It started out as one scholarship the first year or two. Scholarships were presented each year since 2010. As the endowment has grown from contributions and memorial money from people in the community, more scholarships could be presented in larger amounts. Donations continue to be accepted and welcomed. This past spring the Class of 1967 gave away three $1,000 Nine Angels Scholarships to Juda seniors.

Piano lessons

Rita graduated from Whitewater with a major in business and a minor in music. When their oldest son was five, she asked him if he wanted to learn how to play the piano, and he said yes. She had three younger children at that time, and interruptions to the lesson happened. Therefore, the lessons were longer than normal and he just remained seated till his mom returned to continue. That was his special time with his mom. Rita feared the younger ones would never want to choose to have piano lessons because of what they were viewing, but one by one they wanted to have their special time at the piano, too. 

“I was able to give each of them piano lessons,” Rita said. 

Once their children were all in school, she started giving piano lessons to others. Over the years, she has taught hundreds upon hundreds of children and adults. Many students start taking lesson at 5- or 6-years-old, and some continue through high school. There are not many studies where one has the same teacher for 11 or 12 years, Rita said. 

While Rita was giving piano lessons, Tom always had little projects to tinker on. Tom’s most recent project was restoring an old, rusty jeep; and that took him several years to complete. Piano lessons were given in the Farris living room for a number of years. In 1994, they built a downstairs piano studio by digging out the crawl space under the former porch. Students could now enter the studio through a side door to enter the waiting room and piano studio.

When COVID-19 hit, it changed things once again for Rita. She offered her students the chance to try to virtual lessons for six weeks, free of charge. Since that worked, it continued for about two years for those students who wanted to continue that way. 

“I had copies of the music myself that each student was using, so I could follow along even if I could not see their fingers. A pause in the music being played meant something was not being done correctly and needed to be addressed,” Rita explained. “Teaching virtually also means I can now teach my grandchildren in Minnesota while still being in my home,” Rita added.

How much longer will she teach is a question, too. She said as long as she enjoys it and is physically able to do so, she would like to continue giving piano lessons.

Crystal Apple winner

This past April, Rita was surprised as a recipient of NBC15’s Crystal Apple award. Based in Madison, NBC15 annually recognizes area teachers who have touched the lives of students in unique and special ways.

“I knew nothing about it. They (Juda school officials) said I had to promise to come to the school for a presentation on April 20 that the students really wanted me there for,” Rita said. “Once in the gym, it was suggested that Tom and I sit on chairs the opposite side of the bleachers.”

“When they started the ceremony, one of the first acknowledgments was welcoming Channel 15, and I thought to myself, ‘Oh boy, this must be big if the TV station is here,’” Rita said. 

Then she nearly went into shock when they called her name and presented her with a Crystal Apple award. 

“I am glad I was sitting down, because if I had been standing, I would not have been standing for much longer,” she said. “They asked if I recognized anyone in the crowd among the student body. Since they were on the opposite end of the gym, it was not easy to recognize anyone.” 

There were many of the members of the Juda Class of ’67. 

“How special and precious to see them step forward to greet me,” Rita said.

The crew asked her again if she recognized anyone else on the bleachers. Since she did not, her family walked toward her to add to the surprise. Others greeting her from the crowd were families of former piano students, a neighbor, and friends who also learned about this event during the previous 24 hours. 

“It was overwhelming.” Rita confided.

Although the presentation did not last long, Rita said the TV crew was there for nearly three hours. She even gave an impromptu piano lesson to a former student who was home from Antarctica where he works. He was home visiting his family for a few weeks. It was not difficult to find a piano in the music department, but her teaching materials were at home in her studio.

“I asked him if he could remember any of the music he had memorized ten years ago, and he said, ‘Rita, I worked so hard on that Class A recital solo that I will never allow myself to forget it,’” she recalled.