Prairie Village ? A couple of months ago, Romney Ketterman and his wife decided their house needed a thorough cleaning in preparation for their 50th anniversary.

Ketterman’s attention was directed to a closet where boxes had set on a high shelf for decades. When he lifted one box down and started to investigate the keepsakes inside, he came across a group of yellowed letters written in pencil on notebook paper or Big Chief tablet sheets.

The letters transported him back to December 1942, when he was a young teacher-turned-soldier opening letters sent to him by his former students at Pleasant Ridge, a one-room elementary school near Goff that was heated by a coal stove and known as The Pepperbox because of its shape.

“How do you like it in the army. What do you do. Do you March and drill Much? Are you still a private yet. Do you you like it very Well? Why don’t you ever write to us,” pupil John McDaniel wrote to Ketterman on Dec. 16, 1942.

Ketterman, 85, of Prairie Village, said he received letters from eight of his 12 former students and a card from their new teacher, Mary Louise Werner.

“The kids don’t know I kept all the letters,” he said.

Ketterman was born in Kansas City, Kan., and traveled throughout Kansas as his father took various teaching jobs in rural schools. He graduated from White Cloud High School in 1938 and then enrolled at Highland Junior College. During his second year at Highland, he heard about a teaching job at a country school district near Goff.

After an interview with its three-member board, the 18-year-old was hired to teach all subjects to grades 1 through 8 at Pleasant Ridge. He was paid $50 a month for eight months, from September through April.

“In 1940-41, I taught four pupils,” Ketterman said. “In 1941-42, I had 12 students. It had tripled.”

When he was rehired for the second year, his salary was bumped to $60 a month. A farm family who lived in a neighboring district asked to send their children to Pleasant Ridge, and he agreed to teach those children for an extra $5 a month.

Ketterman, who boarded with a family during the school week, was at his parents’ home in Summerfield when he heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Soon afterward, the United States declared war on Japan and many young men enlisted in or were drafted by the military.

When it came time to renew Ketterman’s teaching contract for the 1942-43 school year, the Pleasant Ridge school board declined, thinking the young instructor would surely be drafted before long. They were right. In August 1942, Uncle Sam came calling.

Ketterman, who was drafted by the U.S. Army, completed basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., spent a year “on maneuvers” at a military post near Tullahoma, Tenn., and returned to Fort Jackson for more training.

It was during his training that he received the letters from his former pupils, who told him about the piano solos they would be playing at the annual Christmas program or what gifts they hoped Santa would bring them.