The students and those who knew her well called her “Miss Eddie Mae.” In her honor, the people who spearheaded and conducted the efforts to restore the former St. Mary’s Church/Pocahontas Colored School have given the building the name “The Eddie Mae Herron Center.” She was the school for the African American children who attended between 1948 and 1965.

Miss Eddie Mae began her teaching career in what was known as the “Biggers Colored School” [of Biggers, Arkansas] in 1940 but moved with the children to Pocahontas with the closure of the Biggers school. In this one-room school, Miss Eddie Mae taught everything, emphasizing the basics, especially reading.

Court records reveal that Eddie Mae Hill (incorrectly designated as “Etta May Hill”) married E.W. Herron in 1936, and her age was 26 at the time of the marriage. In 1959, Miss Eddie Mae married Ollie McDonald, and after his death, she would marry one final time, to Elbert Henry Jones, in 1965. Based on the ages listed for Miss Eddie Mae on marriage records, she was born circa 1908-1910.

When the one-room school on Archer Street was closed due to consolidation, Miss Eddie Mae was hired by the Pocahontas Public Schools to teach reading. After the first year of teaching there, she moved to Blytheville, Arkansas, and died three years later.

She held an AB degree from Philander Smith College, Little Rock, and had done graduate study in reading, science and health at the University of Arkansas.

Those who remember her point also to the many other things Miss Eddie Mae taught to the children in grades one through eight: health, home economics, civics, penmanship, music, and even drama, with “plays” produced on home-made television screens and annual Christmas programs. Hers was a classroom always open to parents, and hers was a classroom that is remembered by former students today as “a place where we had everything we needed for learning.”

One former student said it was “a place where I learned pretty much everything I know.”