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Frank Rackett gets his due in the 1945 dedication of the class annual
to him in appreciation for helping to invent the school. It's too bad
that more biographical information was not given. At this time little
is known about where he came from, how he happened to buy the Payne
farm on the northwest corner of Allen Road ( 36th Street ) and Division
Avenenue, and so on.
The last sentence, beginning with "This collection," pretty much sums up a life's work, and the tragedy of what was allowed to happen to the collection by an indifferent and ill equiped recipient. But Frank Rackett's real contribution to the school resulted from a chance meeting with Charles Saur in about 1923, when Charles Saur's car broke down in front of Frank Rackett's house. A member of the school board, Frank Rackett offered Charles Saur a job in the one room school house. By the time Frank Rackett moved to St. Louis in about 1948, and Charles Saur left the school in about 1950, a school system second to none, then or now, was turning out large numbers of productive graduates. This legacy is a greater monument to Frank Rackett than what he hoped his musueum would be. |