Younger sister of ‘Golden Girls’ star visits Washington Irving

Dr. Melinda McClanahan had not seen the inside of Washington Irving Elementary School in 76 years.

That all changed when she visited Durant with her husband Robert Porter recently and toured the school. Mc-Clanahan and older sister, the late Rue McClanahan, attended WI when the family lived in Durant during the 1940s.

Rue McClanahan starred in the sitcom “The Golden Girls,” which aired from 19851992.

Dr. McClanahan was in town with her husband to visit the Choctaw Nation and speak with Chief Gary Bat- ton and Assistant Chief Jack Austin. They drove to Durant from their home in Silver City, New Mexico.

“The reason being, there is a new museum being built in Tulsa and they contacted me a few months ago and said it’s a museum called Oklahoma History of Pop Culture and they are doing a permanent display on my famous sister, who was Rue McClanahan and most of you know her as Blanche Devereaux on the Golden Girls,” McClanahan said. “I’ve put together a group of family photos. I’ve got 45 of them on a flash drive that I’m taking up to the museum but I wanted to meet with Chief Batton first and show him.

“One of the pictures I’m showing is a picture of our Choctaw great-grandfather and I wanted to stress the fact to the people who come to the museum that my sister had a Choctaw heritage and was a part of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. I wanted to show him the picture, get his blessing and see if there is anything else he might want me to tell the museum about it.”

McClanahan then decided that since she would be in Durant, she would love to visit Washington Irving Elementary School.

“My contact had told me that the principal had a picture of my sister in the office and I thought, ‘Well, how wonderful. I wonder if they would like to have a picture of my sister and me when we were actually students at Washington Irving,’” McClanahan said.

McClanahan attended WI from first-third grades and her older sister Rue started in the fourth grade and went through eighth grade in Durant before the family moved in 1948.

She visited Durant in 2011 but only drove by the school and did not go inside.

Asked about her memories at WI, McClanahan said, “I remember that first of all, we lived fairly close by so I could ride my bicycle and sometimes walk here, but I remember my loving memories of the three teachers that I had. My first-grade teacher was Mrs. Middleton, second grade was Mrs. Fuller and third grade, it was Mrs. Miller, and Mrs. Fuller was important to me because she taught me phonetics. Mrs. Miller was important to me because one day she let me out of class to come decorate the hall display case for Easter.

“It was a lively school. We had great fun on Halloween. They had wonderful Halloween carnivals here. They called them carnivals then. There was a really scary horror house. A lot of wives, a lot of the mothers I’m sure, spent hours peeling grapes and putting them in the bowl and telling us they were eyeballs. It was a marvelous school, yes.”

Their mother, Dreda Rheua-Nell McClanahan, owned a beauty shop in town.

“She was a homeroom mother here at Washington Irving and sponsored a lot of the activities,” McClanahan said. “I had great friends here. I’ve always wondered what happened to some of them.”

Before leaving Washington Irving, McClanahan was presented several gifts, including a WI T-shirt.

“My visit today has been marvelous,” she said.