116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: Inga Tapper
‘It’s never as bad as it seems,’ longtime Polk principal would tell kids
Inga Tapper, who was the Polk Elementary principal in Cedar Rapids from 1924 to 1956, turned 95 in 1980.
Insurance agent Liz Young showed up to give her a check from her life insurance company.
Tapper had bought a life insurance policy from Mutual of Omaha in 1921. She paid it up in 1951 and held onto it. When she turned 95, she’d outlived the policy, and the insurance company paid her the policy’s cash value.
The unusual circumstance made the paper. Young, the insurance agent, said that while it was not unusual for people to live that long, it was unusual for anyone to hang onto a policy long enough to cash it in for its full value. The amount of the check was not reported.
The Tapper family
Inga Tapper was born Dec. 27, 1884, in La Crosse, Wis., to B.O. (Bernt) and Emilie Tapper, who moved to Iowa in 1897 where her father became part owner of two Stone City quarries.
He sold those in 1906 and moved to Cedar Rapids to partner with E.J.C. Bealer in the construction business. He became sole owner of the Cedar Rapids Construction Co. in 1916. The firm, specializing in roads, bridges, paved streets and sewers, built the Rock Island bridge near the packinghouse.
The Tappers had three daughters, Inga, Olga and Martha and two sons, Edgar and Raymond. They began building their home at 348 Forest Dr. in 1925.
Raymond Tapper went on to become the police chief, before being elected Cedar Rapids’ streets and public improvements commissioner in 1950.
When Edgar went off to fight in World War I in 1917, Inga made a flag to honor him and the 16 other young men from First English Lutheran Church (later First Lutheran Church) who had enlisted.
Olga and Bertha Tapper became teachers. Inga Tapper worked briefly as a secretary in her family’s construction business before she, too, became a teacher.
54-year career
Inga Tapper started teaching at a rural school. She moved to Cedar Rapids in 1902 when she was 18 to teach seventh- and eighth-grade at Fillmore Elementary. (At the time, being smart and graduating from eighth grade was the only requirement to become a teacher.)
Later, she taught math at Jackson Elementary for a year before becoming principal at Hayes Elementary for two years. When she was 39, she became principal at Polk Elementary in 1924, a job she would keep for 32 years before retiring at age 71 in 1956.
Along the way, she earned her teaching degree from Coe College in 1926, graduating with honors, and a master’s degree in education from the University of Iowa in 1935.
“I’m never so happy as when I’m doing something for someone else and they don’t know I’m doing it,” she told The Gazette in a 1927 interview.
“I’m optimistic. I usually can look on the bright side of things. I’ve taught myself to believe that everything will turn out for the best. This viewpoint has probably come as a result of my teaching since I tell the children to remember the aphorism, ‘It’s never as bad as it seems.’ “
When Tapper retired in 1956, she didn’t want a big party. Instead, she hosted a dinner at the family home on Forest Drive for four of her colleagues, one of them retiring and three of them moving on to other jobs.
The Polk PTA, however, surprised her with a retirement reception at Central Park Presbyterian Church. Guests were past presidents of the Polk PTA and principals of other schools who had worked with her. Her sisters served coffee to the people who attended.
Retirement
Tapper stayed active in retirement.
On Oct. 17, 1958, she was a guest at a luncheon at the Roosevelt Hotel to honor first lady Mamie Doud Eisenhower, who’d attended Jackson Elementary when her family lived in Cedar Rapids. (President Eisenhower was busy at the national cornpicking contest near Marion.)
Tapper was a charter member of Theta chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma professional society for women educators, Mu Phi Epsilon international music sorority, American Association of University Women, the Masonic Lodge and chapter GM of PEO. She also was a director for Junior Red Cross.
In 1960, she was named a life member of the Iowa State Education Association, an honor to go along with her life membership in the State Historical Society of Iowa, presented in 1951.
In 1969, Tapper was selected, along with Ralph Clements and Barton Pope, to receive Coe’s Alumni Award of Merit.
A brick gift
In 1971, the old Polk school where Tapper had been principal was torn down, but some of the bricks were saved.
Three of Tapper’s former students, Bill McNiel, Bob McNiel and Bill Kuba, obtained one of those bricks and autographed it .The three showed up at Tapper’s house in September 1976 to give her the brick and a photo of the old Polk school.
When a Gazette editor caught up with Tapper three years later, she still had the brick. She was 95 and still living in the home her father had built in 1925. Most of her days were spent answering letters, working on her family’s history and connecting with her nephews.
Tapper was 96 when she died July 1, 1981. Her obituary, in keeping with her personal tastes, was four brief paragraphs. She is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery
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