Consolidated Dist. No. 8 Brick School 1929 – 1957

A New Building

While decisions involving the development of a new building were made in 1928, no doubt a great deal of planning and commitment occurred in 1927.

Sometime before the summer of 1928 (one would assume in the late winter), there must have been an election to decide on the bond issue for the new building, as the bonds were issued that year.

Also this was the year that Union School #10 disbanded with Lick Skillet and Mullins annexed to Mt. Park.

Student’s Memories

Pauline (Dempsey) Manning recalls that her first classes at Con. 8 in the Fall of 1929 were in the new brick building which was finished.

Joy Shockley whose birth day is October 29, 1922 started school two times; first in 1928 and again in 1929 when she was almost seven. After her first start, the minimum age was revised upward (arising, perhaps, from negotiations of State Aid questions relative to the planned school expansion or it may have been because of space problems arising from the construction) ; so she had to quit and start again next year. She remembers a lot of messy temporary arrangements during her abbreviated participation in the 1928-29 school year involving the old building and new construction. Not to be forestalled, Joy completed work for her diploma in 11 years graduating in 1940.

Wilma (Duke) Stout remembers a year when classes were held in the gymnasium while work was done on the school building. She also remembers her father Luther Duke working on the building of the gymnasium. Luther was the “ginner” at the Con. 8 Gin and had a wide range of special skills, carpentry, mechanical, electrical, etc. Wilma would have been in the fifth grade in 1928-29.

In a brief history of Con. 8 circulated at the 1979 Con. 8 reunion, Velma McFarland remembered that a gymnasium was built before the brick building through volunteer labor, and that classes were held in the gymnasium while the new classrooms were being built. The memories above add some detail.

What happened to the old two-story frame building?

I think that it was dismantled to provide materials for the gymnasium and perhaps some other small buildings including probably additional teacherage space. The frame building probably sat over the area of the auditorium of the new building, and would have had to been removed to permit construction of the brick building. However, I have little hard evidence to back this up.

Additional Notes

Trees along the road were planted in ’36 but most died and were replanted in ’39.

Electricity came in the  spring of ’39.

Some additional concrete walks around building were also added in ’39.

In 1947 there was a lunch room for first time using part of Room #1. The exterior Lunch Room was added on east side in 1948 or 1949?  Some of these dates and the ones of greatest certainty are taken from stories in issues of the Student Review for 1937-43.  Others are fairly good guesses based on memories related to me, my own memories, and especially a careful study of the photographs of the building on the collages of the high school graduating classes.

The diagram at the left shows the floor plan of the building with numbers which I use to keep a clear record of how the space was utilized.

Room 8, on southeast, was added in the spring of 1939.

Until the 1937-38 school year, the 4 rooms on west with four teachers were used for grades 1-7, leaving 3 rooms on the east with three teachers for high school and 8th grade.

It would appear that the four grade teachers and four rooms would be a perfect match for grades 1 to 8 at two grades per room;  but all these early years for which there is information indicates that the eighth grade was integrated with high school.

In that time, either the first grade was a single group in Room 1 or one of the larger grade groups was split between two rooms producing one and a half grades in each.

Three examples are known from the later years. In ’34-’35,  the fourth grade was split between two rooms so that 2 rooms housed three grades.  In the following two years the first grade had Room 1 to itself.

In 1937-38, the increased enrollment finally allowed the addition of another grade school school teacher, but space was tight. The compromise arrangement relieved the overcrowding in the grades and reduced the load on the high school faculty, but constricted the high school space.

Mrs. DeWees had the first grade alone. The large 3rd grade of that year was split with half being taught in Room 2, with the 2nd, and half in Room 3 with the 4th.

Grades 7 & 8 were taught in Room 7 by Mr. Louis. Ethridge (Really this teacher  is “Bill” husband of Blanche but he is referred to as Louis, or  Louis I., or just Mr. and never as “Bill”  in the Student Review .  On the other hand, Mrs. Ethridge is referred to at least once as Mrs.”Bill”.) Ethridge use of  Room 7 forced extensive use of the auditorium, A, for high school classes.

The new grade school teacher was Miss Small who had grades 5 & 6 in Room 4. She is remembered fondly by many old students as a petite red-head who roomed her first year in the home of Opal and  Lee Speights. She taught all of her students music and organized student choir groups.

A similar arrangement was continued in 1939, with the large fifth grade split, half with the fourth and half with the sixth in Room 3 and Room 4.

Finally by fall of 1939, Room 8 was completed by the WPA and immediately put to use as the home room for Mr. Ethridge’s 7 & 8 grades.

The high school now had three full time teachers and three rooms. The first grade had its own  room, and the fifth grade was split between Room 3 and Room 4.

The use of five rooms for grades continued the next year, with the first grade and sixth grade  having Room 1 and Room 4 with a single grade group.

This arrangement continued until 1941-42, when the first and second were combined again and Mr. Ethridge’s 7 & 8 grades moved into Room 4, and each of the west rooms had two grade groups. (See year 41-42 for some remaining puzzles about this change).

The next year, the old plan of the early thirties was returned to with the 8th grade treated as part of the high school, but now the five upper classes had four teachers and 4 rooms available.

Mrs. Kennemer, who had taught first grade the previous two years, was the new high school teacher offering home economics perhaps for the first time. Grades 1 to 7 were taught again by four teachers in four rooms. This basic arrangement continued for perhaps as many as  ten years, and generally permitted the beginners to have a room and teacher of their own, but there were exceptions.

The Dressing room D and other room off stage L , were available for various uses. L was used as a Library in the 1940’s. I have found in the Student Review for Sept. 4, 1942 that the new Library had just been completed.  Apparently prior to this that area was associated with the basement (entry way?) and the Library was in a part of Room 5. I also remember it being used as an offstage area during plays.  At that time, the former Library space was converted into an office for the Superintendent, just off the hallway to the front entrance. D was used as a resource room for the Agriculture classes in 1945-46.  More detail is available  in some of the year by year summaries.

The basement use is a bit of a mystery to me.  It was used as storage in the 1940’s, but it often had water in it.  I can remember a year when the dried fruit provided to the school under the Agriculture Department’s Excess Commodities operation was stored there along with unused furniture. There was also a coal bin in the basement filled by a chute opening on the south side of the building. It seems probable to me that this basement which was only under the area of the Auditorium might have been the original one in the old building or at least the same excavation.