Remarkable Lampasans
Importance of education instilled in first LHS librarian
By Bobbye Alexander Behlau Special to the Dispatch Record

Mutsu Nagai Crumley sits in front of memorabilia from Japan, the home of her ancestors.

Mutsu Nagai was a remarkable Lampasan to me back in 1943, when I first entered Lampasas High School. I remember the sound of the heels on her tiny slippers as they clicked across the hardwood floors of the library on the second floor of the old ivy-covered building. She served as the first LHS librarian and also was assigned the extra duty of study hall supervisor. I recall her putting a finger to her lips and shushing noisy students. Her polite demeanor usually brought a quick change in behavior.

I am pleased that 64 years later I can share her story. Mutsu Nagai Crumley is my Remarkable Lampasan for the month.

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Mutsu was the second of six children born to Junzo and Hisa Nagai. Her parents came from Japan in 1909, along with four other Japanese families, and settled near Houston in a town called Terry that later was renamed Vidor.

Mutsu Nagai in the 1930s enjoys a ride in the car of fellow teacher Viva Mae Cox (Wright).

Her father was a bookkeeper and a scholar. He prided himself in his 1,000-volume personal library. Mrs. Nagai busied herself with caring for her active family.

They lived in a small frame house near the general store. Mutsu recalls a carefree childhood roaming the countryside, climbing trees and eating blackberries.

A new school superintendent in the little community once remarked that all the children had purple teeth, not realizing it was only during blackberry season the phenomenon occurred.

Her parents realized the importance of their children learning English, so Japanese was rarely spoken. They also stressed the importance of getting an education and always expected the best performance, not only at home, but also at school.

The children walked two miles to a one-room school, except in inclement weather when their father drove them in a horse-drawn wagon.

When a Methodist minister invited them to church, they became active, not only attending worship services but also Sunday School and Bible study. Mutsu has been a Methodist ever since.

Bobbye Alexander Behlau

For junior high and high school, the Nagai children were driven by their father in their first car to Beaumont. All six subsequently graduated from college. Their professions include an engineer for the Texas Highway Department; librarian at LHS; home economics teacher; art therapist for patients in a Navy hospital; laboratory technician at MD Anderson Hospital; and one who stayed in Vidor and became a rice farmer.

Mutsu continued her education at Lamar Junior College and at Texas State College for Women in Denton, where she received a bachelor's degree in library science in 1937.

She worked in the dining hall, where students were expected to dress for dinner. She recalls gaining the proverbial 10 pounds many freshmen put on.

After graduation, she secured a job as librarian at Lampasas High School. Mutsu said she'll never forget how frightened she was upon arriving in the fall of 1937 at 5 a.m. to a dark town where she knew not a soul.

The train backed into the station a block from the square. She didn't have to be apprehensive long because a Mr. West appeared, representing Superintendent of Schools Wachendorfer who was out of town on business. Mr. West escorted her to the Wachendorfer Hotel just a block from the train station, where Mrs. Wachendorfer entertained Mutsu and took her to lunch at a Mexican restaurant.

Her orientation to Lampasas started later that day when the superintendent returned from his travels and took her to visit the high school just two blocks from his hotel. The next stop was Elzie Smith's Boarding House on Key Avenue.

The boarding house boasted a dining room where the singles in Lampasas ate their meals. The single teachers lived, if not at the boarding house as Mutsu did, in private homes on Key Avenue.

Back of the main house where the women boarders lived were rooms for men. She remembers meeting a J.M. Crumley who impressed her.

Residents paid $20 a month for room and board. Mutsu earned the princely salary of $68 each month from the school district and always managed to put some money into savings, she said.

On Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Mutsu and some teacher friends went to the country to cut Christmas trees. When they returned to town they learned the Japanese Air Force had attacked U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor. Mutsu said she was terrified to think what that meant for Japanese families in America, especially those, like hers, who still had relatives in Japan.

She need not have worried about the Nagai family. While some Japanese on the West Coast were put in internment camps, the Nagais were so well established that people in Beaumont wrote letters to the newspaper, praising her family for being exemplary citizens and pleading that they not be uprooted.

In Lampasas, Mutsu was well taken care of, too. Principal Dudley Moore wrote to her parents saying she would be safe in Lampasas. (The letter is in the files at the Keystone Square Museum.)

It was not until 1948 that the family began communicating again with their relatives in Japan.

Later, most of Mutsu's brothers and sisters went to Japan for at least one visit. A sister taught home economics one year in Japan, but she had to have an interpreter because she had retained little of the Japanese she learned in her childhood.

Mutsu preferred to just stay home in Lampasas.

One uncle who later worked for a U.S. company did visit her parents in Vidor, and a niece visited Mutsu once in Lampasas.

In 1947, she left LHS to work at Baylor University, where she received training in a larger library. The event that stands out in her mind about the seven years at Baylor was a library convention she attended in Mexico City. She thought this quite an adventure for a girl who had never been out of Texas.

Upon returning to Lampasas in 1954 to serve again as high school librarian, she married the J.M. Crumley she had met at the boarding house.

The Crumleys built their home on Fifth Street, where they lived for the rest of their married life.

J.M. was a supervisor of engineering technicians at Fort Hood. When he retired, he stayed busy keeping the courthouse clock running and using his engineering skills where needed.

Mutsu retired in 1975 -- along with longtime friend Viva Mae Cox Wright. She continued to contribute to Lampasas by being one of the founders of the Keystone Square Museum and by organizing a library at First United Methodist Church.

She remembers the hard manual labor involved in turning Bud Bailey's plumbing shop into a museum with co-workers Doris Earnest, Robert and Jo Faught, and Laverne and Rush McMillin.

Mutsu expressed thankfulness that she and J.M. had some retirement years to enjoy together before he died.

After some cozy hours reminiscing with me, Mutsu mentioned her gratitude for how well she has been treated here, not only in her youth but also now that she is limited with her activities.

She expressed appreciation for her helpers and all those who visit.

I, in turn, thanked her for her kind treatment of rowdy kids in the study hall of that ivy-covered building back in 1943, and for the good example she has set all these years.

Bobbye Alexander Behlau was born in Lampasas and graduated from high school in 1946. After living for the past 50 years in San Antonio where she was an elementary school principal, she and her husband, Joe, have retired in Lampasas.

Mrs. Behlau is a descendant of the Alexanders and the Davises who settled here in the 1800s. She can be contacted at 556-4076 or by e-mail at bbehlau@earth-comm.com.