Center School

Besides the Knox County Courthouse, the visible reason why the town had been created in the first place, Center's dominant institution was not the Congregational Church, though certainly the church wielded its influence and was a major social center.  Schools generate important business from parents at athletic events and other activities so that schools are community focal points.  Our two-story stuccoed school, two elementary rooms on the first floor, high school and then junior-senior high school on the second, also had a dominant location overlooking the town.  The photo at the right of the south view is from the 1950s because the new gymn sits north of the school.

The photo at the left is from in front of our house; the photo at the right is from almost to the church, looking back east.  The school is often in the background of photos because of its hill, as in the photo of the new post office a few entries back.  The hill may not look it but was steep enough for the driver's license examiners to use it for their driving tests, making beginners stop halfway and then start again, either going up or coming down the hill.  I can vouch for that.

 The bell rang twice in the morning, twice at noon, warning and final, measuring the town's time along with the noon whistle.  The superintendent's office was on the second floor over the main door.  At the left on the first floor was the intermediate room, fifth through eighth (later fourth through sixth), the elementary room on the south.  The three second-story windows at the left are on the large high school assembly room used as a study hall and for classes.  The south side of the second floor was classrooms, later subdivided so that the narrow typing room became the junior high when I hit the seventh grade.  The basement was full sized but had a coal storage room (between the two outdoor ramps seen in the first photo at the southeast corner), storage, the huge boiler, and room enough for a ping pong table by the late 1940s.

My cousin, Dennis Ellingson, apparently was visiting on the day these two photos were taken.  I was in the second-third grade that year--that's right, both at the same time--so it must have been 1945.  I started in 1944 in first, kindergarten instituted the following year, and graduated in 1954.  I use this photo to show the large play space at the north, where the swings and teeter-totters were, an area big enough to play baseball/softball or, because we had a choice between a new gymn or six-man football equipment and Superintendent Pease was a basketball fanatic, touch football my high school years.  (We used the town baseball diamond a block north of the church for baseball.)  I mention that because he told the folks I wasn't aggressive enough--after all, I was brought up a very polite, reserved little boy--but our heads accidentally hit when I bowled him over once during those high school touch football games and he had to have several stitches above his eye.  (He dumped me hard the next play.)  Obvious from the first photo of the south side, there was plenty of ball-playing space there too, but we mainly played tag, fox and geese, drop the handkerchief, and other such games on the large flat space.  When I first started school, a stable was along the southwestern edge there--nearby farm children still rode horses to school sometimes--good for playing anti-i-over, as we called it.

This photo from straight on is better for identifying almost everyone and shows the teacher, Mildred "Poody" Erion Greckel, who had gone to summer school at Wayne State Normal (then) with Mom for their elementary teaching certificates.  (I'm presuming Mom took the picture.) Poody stayed at our house, awkward for me that year, but she only taught at Center the one year, and it was at her insistence that I take both grades at once because she couldn't keep me busy enough otherwise. The superintendent then was Edna Lake.

This photo disproves my "well-behaved little boy," for I'm the one with my arms raised, hiding Marilynn Peterson's face.  Anyway, Front, L-R:  Jim McGill, Beverly Foster, (Reynolds?), Sharon Danaher, Sharon Ballard, Stan Eisenbeiss.  Middle, L-R:  Gary Don Luckert, Daniel (?) Pulse, Milton Ballard, Dennis Jon Ellingson, Glenn Konapasek, Marlin Kumm.  Rear, L-R:  Marilynn Peterson, Jack Brockman, Raymond Pulse, Marlene Koenig, Tom Clark, Milford Weaver, Claribel/Polly Cook.

I think the following is from the next year, under Superintendent Joe Knibbs.  The teacher was Joan Truman (who married Dwight McGill either during the year or shortly after).

 First Row:  Shirley Konapasek, Barbara Ballard, Barbara Brockman.  Second Row:  Gary Olson, Stanley Eisenbeiss, (Reynolds?), Beverly Foster, Sharon Danaher, Sharon Ballard.  Third Row:  Miss Truman, Milton Ballard, Marlin Kumm, Daniel(?) Pulse, Glenn Konapasek, (?) Hirsch.  Fourth Row:  Miss Truman, Gary Don Luckert, Janice Sedivy, Helen Rothenberger, Milford Weaver, Marilynn Peterson, Darlene Hirsch.

I have many, many school memories, as in summer sneaking up the rear fire escape and, risking wasp stings, opening a window into the assembly to get in (not alone--with Marilynn, Jack, Milford--and we never vandalized anything, just snooped) or playing cowboys and indians in the oak woods at the southwest and northwest corners or games around the flagpole in front.  The hill was especially important, not just because I often had to race up the steps on the north side to avoid being late or because we tested bicycle prowess on it (few could pedal all the way up) but supremely because of the sledding.  I threw myself in a belly flop on my sled or held my dog sitting up and spent hours into days there.  Dad would block off the first cross street for us often, usually in the evenings after the business day, so we could go safely all the way to Main Street without watching out for cars.  Prone to erosion, the hill was usually heavily gravelled, so it took good snows to let us whizz down, and we groused when they put on new gravel for bus traction.  (The hills behind the school were too precipitous, and there was an apocryphal story about a boy who started at the very top and got his head cut off sliding under the barbed wire fence that ran around the edge of the school property.)  It does not look so glorious today, except in memory.

We were very proud of our new gymn, with its big stage, kitchen, and locker room space (one doubled as a shop class area for a few years).  In 1953 it was the biggest and best in the county, and we got many basketball tournaments afterwards, besides which it took over many social functions from the old town hall.

 For some reason I didn't get the photo I took, but today the gymn is a peculiar sight, cut in half, the north half sitting open to the elements, the south half largely gone.  And where the school stood looks like this.

   Of course, we were doomed because of our small size, along with the 93 one-room rural school houses in Knox County.  Betrayed into a big school fight, we lost the high school and junior high, which killed the town, though the hemorrhaging took a few more years, during which time we also lost the elementary K-6 school, with three different school buses--Bloomfield, Creighton, and Verdigre--coming into town to pick up our children.  That's why my sisters and Sue's four graduated from Bloomfield, where Mom and her family had.  That's why I bleed for all the small towns with whining farmers and old people carping about taxes who wreck the school and thereby kill the town, supported by the bureaucratic state favoring the easily managed, more centralized consolidation.