Arvid Huisman is seen protesting another cause; an instructor’s proposal that county elections be streamlined to make voting easier. “When I protested, he called me a ‘little patriot,’” said Huisman.
Nov/Dec 2025 (Volume 17, Issue 6)
By Arvid Huisman
A lesson learned more than 60 years ago remains fresh in my memory and close to my heart.
It was the spring of 1964. My friend, Lyle, and I were sophomores at a small high school in rural North Central Iowa, miles away from the hotbeds of the student activism of the 1960s. Nonetheless, we were inspired by the movement and decided to initiate our own protest against what we thought were minuscule portions and poor quality of food served in our school’s hot lunch program. We would conduct a hot lunch strike, we decided, crippling the system and forcing the administration to make the improvements we demanded.
In our young minds, we thought our school superintendent was an autocrat and the school board his rubber stamp. Our cause merited strong action.
These were the days before photocopiers so one night I pounded out dozens of typewritten (and carbon-copied) notices. The next day Lyle and I distributed the announcements to other students. “Bring your sack lunch tomorrow,” we urged. “Let the cooks sit with that stuff they call food!”
Our efforts went unchecked and I looked forward to the next day—a day of reckoning for the school powers. However, as I stepped aboard the school bus that afternoon, a brawny hand clasped my shoulder. It was the hand of our principal, Mr. Westwick.
“Arvid,” he said coldly, “I want to visit with you.”
Someone had ratted. Mr. Westwick said he knew I was involved in a hot lunch strike and wanted to know who else was involved in this breach of school policy. I refused to name my co-conspirators. He then indicated he already knew Lyle was involved and he said he wanted to see Lyle and me the first thing the next day.
That night was uncomfortable. Corporal punishment was still practiced at our school in 1964. Everyone knew the principal’s office was equipped with “the board”—a piece of 1×4 lumber with the handle end trimmed for a good grip and with holes drilled in the paddle end to cut down on wind resistance.
The next morning Lyle and I met Mr. Westwick at his office where he asked us to accompany him to the “cloak room.” Lyle and I glanced nervously at one another as we approached the cloak room door. Once inside the long, bleak and narrow room, Mr. Westwick reminded us of his disappointment with the situation. (Lyle and I weren’t all that thrilled with the current situation either.)
He lectured us for a few very long minutes and then—just when we expected him to order us to bend over and grab our ankles—he informed us that he was turning us over to Miss Molln, our school’s home economics teacher. Since she was responsible for the hot lunch program, he said, she could mete out any punishment she saw fit.
This was not good. Miss Molln had a reputation for being a firm disciplinarian. Very firm.
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