Legends of First Grade
Back to School Heroes
At every age there are standouts. These wunderkinds shine from their early years. Most of us get a trial run in preschool, kindergarten, Vacation Bible School, or on Sesame Street, the preseason of education. But when the prep is over, the notebooks and backpacks are purchased, and the coolest sneakers are tied, it is game on. We understand all too well for whom the bell tolls.
Coming up, some superstar first graders from different times and places, true heroes of first grade. They were all just six years old, a time when the doors or the laptops swing open to welcome the best, the brightest, and the rest of us.
With first grade, the true count begins. You are locked in for a haul of a dozen years that will take you from innocence to the cusp of the real world. It’s not a competition, but you definitely don’t want to lose.
Psychologists will tell you it’s never a good idea to compare where you are in life with someone the same age who might have two albums on the charts right now. Not with someone your age who just signed a five-book deal or just paid for a three-minute trip into space.
Take it from someone who is four days younger than Stevie Wonder. This budding professor DJ was 12 and throwing his paper route when Little Stevie had “Fingertips Part 2,” the number one song in the nation.
“Six is the year when reading becomes pleasure. It is an imaginative age, an age for thinking things out in one’s head before performing an action. It is a time for internalizing one’s thoughts—a major threshold for the human being to pass. This leads to an increased interest in school subjects and a decreased interest in toys. Books, stories, television and films suddenly become more absorbing because of the child’s expanding imagination. As so much more is going on inside the head of the six-year-old, he or she often seems rather preoccupied compared with younger children; also more apprehensive and sometimes hesitant. The six-year-old often doddles where the five-year-old would’ve rushed. Despite these changes, the six-year-old child is still a delightful if rather demanding, companion.” —Desmond Morris, The Book of Ages
At the Age of 6...
1738 - George Washington receives a hatchet from his father and, according to Parson Weems, chops down a cherry tree.
1762 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gives violin and clavier recitals in the courts of Europe following his debut at the Hapsburg palace in Schönbrunn. There he slipped on the shiny floor and was helped to his feet by the 7-year-old niece of the empress. Young Wolfy promptly proposed to his rescuer, Marie Antoinette.
1812 - Future Member of Parliament John Stuart Mill pens a history of Rome.
1824 - Frederick Douglass is taken from the care of his grandmother so that he can be put to work at the mansion of Col. Edward Lloyd, U.S. senator from Maryland.
1865 - Future president Theodore Roosevelt watches as the procession carrying the casket of assassinated President Lincoln passes by his grandfather’s New York City window.
1866 - Scottish author James Barrie suffers the death of his 14-year -old brother David in a skating accident. His memory will inspire the character of Peter Pan.
1866 - Helen Keller is introduced to Alexander Graham Bell. The inventor of the telephone tells her parents about the Perkins Institute who will hook Helen up with tutor Anne Sullivan.
1871 - Rudyard Kipling, born in Bombay to colonial parents, is relocated to England for a five-year stay in a foster home.
1876 - In Rajkot, Gujarat, India, Mohandas Gandhi is betrothed to Kasturbai, a merchant’s daughter. For Gandhi, a Hindu, this is his third fiancée.
1888 - James Joyce enters a Jesuit boarding school.
1897 - Cole Porter begins music lessons.
1900 - James Thurber has an accident that takes the sight from his left eye.
1904 - Paul Robeson suffers the death of his mother in a house fire.
1905 - Fred Astaire makes his dancing debut at a resort in Keyport, New Jersey.
1906 - Little Alfred Hitchcock is locked in a jail cell for ten minutes, an odd request to local police made by his father.
1913 - Frida Kahlo comes down with polio but keeps up with her boxing lessons.
1918 - In Seattle, author/activist Mary McCarthy and her three brothers are orphaned by the influenza epidemic.
1926 - Allen Hoskins has been playing the part of Farina in the popular “Our Gang” comedies for five years.
1930 - In Monroeville, Alabama, Truman Capote lives next door to 4-year-old Harper Lee.
1932 - William F. Buckley attends first grade in Paris, where he learns French. His first language was Spanish.
1934 - Shirley Temple records “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” earns $1250 a week, and becomes the youngest person to win an Oscar. She also decides she doesn’t believe in Santa Claus after her mother takes her to meet him at a department store and the jolly old elf asks her for an autograph.
1936- Ray Charles loses his sight to glaucoma.
1936 - Neil Armstrong takes his first flight in a Ford Trimotor (aka “Tin Goose”) in Warren, Ohio.
1939 - Roman Polanski escapes the Krakow Ghetto in Poland, and will spend the duration of the war with a series of foster families. His mother will die in Auschwitz.
1946 - Ringo Starr survives a 10-day coma during a bout of appendicitis.
1949 - Bobby Fischer begins playing chess.
1952 - Dolly Parton plays the mandolin.
1964 - Michael Jackson, the eighth of ten children, joins his brothers in what will become The Jackson Five.
1966 - Jean-Michel Basquiat is enrolled as a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
1968 - Romanian Nadia Comaneci is selected along with 23 other kindergarten students to begin government sponsored gymnastic lessons.
1971 - J. K Rowling writes her first story, a tale of a rabbit with measles.
1977 - Elon Musk sells homemade chocolate Easter eggs door-to-door. Ingredients for each egg costs fifty cents. Musk sells them for $10. When asked about the markup, he replies, ‘Well, you’re supporting a young capitalist. And the reality is if you don’t buy it from me, you’re not going to get one — and I know you can afford $10.’”
1987 - Serena Williams has been playing tennis for two years.
1991 - Gal Gadot remembers hearing about Wonder Woman during her Israeli childhood although her parents won’t let her watch TV.
1992 - Lindsay Lohan has been represented by Ford Models for three years.
1992- Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen mark their fifth year of playing Michelle Tanner in the ABC sitcom Full House (1987-1995). The pair were cast when they were 6 months old, sharing the role to comply with child labor laws.
1993 - Michael B. Jordan modeled in Toys-R-Us ads.
1995 - Taylor Swift, raised on a Pennsylvania Christmas tree farm, attends a Montessori school while being .
2009 - Olivia Rodrigo begins acting and singing lessons. She enjoys parental music choices including Green Day, No Doubt, Pearl Jam and White Stripes.
2021 - Parker Yeager appears with her family on Shot of the Yeagers, a YouTube channel with 4.9 million subscribers and over 2.8 billion views.
“When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” —John Lennon
Source materials:
Tolstoy’s Bicycle, Jeremy Baker, St. Martin’s Press (1982). The Book of Ages, Desmond Morris, The Viking Press (1984) A Book of Ages, Eric Hanson, Harmony Books (2008)
That brought back some happy memories from my early school years. Loved the John Lennon quote