Vera Holcomb

Vera taught eighth-grade science at Ohmsville Junior High for twenty-six years, and in the autumn of 1978 two of her pupils stayed behind after the bell to ask why the lamp in the demonstration got hot enough to burn them. She had no budget for an answer and no period to give it in, so she pushed four desks together on a Thursday, bought a 150-in-1 off the counter at The Electric Connection with her own money, and let the two of them work the manual front to back while she marked papers at the front of the room. By Christmas there were nine of them and a name on the door. She did not find Ohmsville and she was not born into it: she made a room in it, after school, for the kids who had. She kept the sign-in sheet every year she ran the club, which is how she can still tell you which project each of them got stuck on.