
The need for milkweed floss continued beyond the war’s end. Joyce Beard became a teacher at the Allen School, north of Ithaca, in 1946. Her husband Duane had served in the navy during WWII. That fall, her students gathered so many pods that sacks of them filled the unused outhouse. (The school had recently installed indoor toilets, so the outhouses became storage sheds.) However, one day Joyce tried to swing the outhouse door inward to open but found it impossible. All the pods had burst, packing the shed so tightly that she needed extra help just to open the door!