From a One-Room School to a Sub Commander

A barefoot farm boy from Fayette County’s Black Jack Springs area grew up to command one of the world’s largest submarine forces

On the last day of school in May 1947, Miss Eliza Lackey dismissed her students at Luck School. In high spirits, the youngsters in her six grades flew out of the one room schoolhouse west of La Grange near O’Quinn. They were eager to trade their classroom lessons for additional farm chores and perhaps some summer fun.

One boy hung back, though. Graduating from the sixth grade was bittersweet for 12-year-old John Weldon Koenig. Although satisfied with his good report card, Weldon recognized that his formal education stopped when the schoolhouse door closed behind him.

That’s the way it was. Luck School was not part of a larger school district with the means and headcount to run a bus to pick up rural students to attend a large town school. Weldon’s father, John Henry “Johnny” Koenig, who had a sixth grade education, could use the help of his big, growing boy around the farm. His mother, Elva Oeding Koenig, who had finished the eighth grade, was always busy around the house and garden, as well as looking after her husband, Weldon and his younger brother, Rodney.

In any direction Weldon looked, there was no shortage of manual labor needed to earn a living on their 98 acres of farmland. Was this his future? It was unless he could come up with an alternative.