This past week Champion School was totally torn
down. It was over a hundred years old and I feel so sad about it. My mother,
her sister and brothers went to that school, as well as some of my father’s
brothers and sisters. He didn’t move to Ohio until he was out of school except
for college. He had a large family so a lot of his siblings went there. I went
there as did my brother Jerry, and sisters Elaine and Suzanne. Our younger
sister and brother went to a Salem school after the company my father worked for
transferred to Salem. Six of my cousins went to Champion School, too. All four
of my children went there, and some of my grandchildren, and this past year two
great-grandchildren.
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| Four of my friends at our recent class reunion. |
Recently we had our class reunion and although it
was still standing, we knew it was soon to come down. I guess part of the
problem was it was two stories high, plus a basement area, too, and didn’t have
access for disabled students. It’s where there was a shop class, and a class I
took where we learned to cook and sew. There wasn’t a kindergarten class when I
started school so I was only a student for twelve years there. Mostly I rode
the bus to and from school, but sometimes I decided I’d rather walk since it
was less than a mile from my home. Also, there was a store that was sort of a
grocery store still with wooden floors that I walked by and often stopped to
get something. Now it’s a large grocery
store with lots of things to buy still owned by the same family that had the
original Klingamire’s Market.
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| The school with the new section. |
When I got to junior high, they added on a big
section for the elementary students and a cafeteria, and turned the former
kitchen and cafeteria into a large study hall where there was a stage with
curtains. Later they enlarged the gym with seats and a stage for plays, too. I
had minor parts in one play and three of my friends and I did a dance and song
for a musical, too. Our music teacher often put on musicals in which I took
part in a large group of students who took music classes. Folding chairs were
set up in front of the stage for parents and others to watch.
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| The gym and stage for plays. |
I often went to the basketball games they had there during the school year. Sometimes they had speakers to come in and talk to us while we sat in the bleachers. Sometimes it was an author, I can’t remember the name of one, but it was the author of one of my favorite horse books about a pony. She told the story of that pony that was her real pony. Somewhere in my thousands of books I think I still have that book unless one of my kids got rid of it when they were young.
The school
library was on the second floor and I loved going up there and taking out books
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| Demolishing the old school. |
After I graduated from school they eventually built
a new high school and a new intermediate school and the old school was only an
elementary school. My two great-grandchildren were in that school for several
years until school was over late this spring. I guess the playground is going
to remain.
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| Nothing left of the school but a lot of debri. |
I remember my first grade teacher asking us what we
wanted to be when we grew up and I said a teacher and a mother. Funny thing it
happened with four children born in less than five years, and even though I
didn’t go to college to become a teacher until my children were grown and out
of school, and a year after my oldest son died of cancer in my arms I went to
college a year later.to become a teacher. I taught third grade for twenty years
and loved it, but I didn’t get to teach in Champion School only in schools
closer to where I live today.
Still I have lots of memories of those years in the
school and the friends I had while there.
What do you remember of the school you went to?
Is it still there?
With the exception of a Quonset hut my second grade class used in Blacksburg, VA, and my junior high school all of the schools (6) I attended are still being used as schools. I visited my high school this year as part of our 50th reunion and it looks better than it did when I went there.
ReplyDeleteI started school when the country was de-militarizing from WWII. The development in which we lived was built on a former base (our address was 41 Gun Lane; Target Lane was just down the street, past Artillery Lane.) My first school was a re-purposed airplane hangar. Possibly the original "open classroom" design. It was torn down as soon as a new school building was erected.
ReplyDeleteJim some of us in our class visited it several years ago, too. I could have visited this year, too, but didn't take the time. It was the only school I was in my whole time until I went to college.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, KM. How old were you when they finally built a new school? One of the reasons they tore down this school was that it wasn't able to take on students who were handicapped and needed wheelchairs. Also it was three floors so those who were using crutches would have a hard time going up and down stairs, too. They did build a one floor school both for middle school and high school.
It is sad to see all these old buildings torn down. In my hometown, they have been tearing down the old schools and replacing them with buildings that aren't half as well built. In one case, they took one of the old school buildings and turned it into a retirement community, where at least the building is still being used. Someone in my town has been posting on Facebook old photos of buildings that had been standing for a hundred years and are now gone. We have such a short life span for buildings in this country.
ReplyDeleteGrace, I feel the same way. I hate seeing old buildings torn down. It seems it could have been
ReplyDeleteused in some other way. Where I live now the old school has been turned into a museum. My granddaughter went to the new building her two small ones will be going to, and was upset about the incredibly small library it has.