One-room school students reunite to share memories

By Chuck Carlson
Battle Creek Enquirer

MARSHALL, Mich. (AP) — They came to talk and to remember.

They came out of curiosity and, perhaps, out of some sense of obligation.

They came from Ohio and Florida and Arizona and Colorado and Indiana and they came, literally, from just down the street.

They came because not to just didn’t seem right.

“I recognized most of them when they walked in,” said Kathy Darling Cook who, along with her sister Julie Darling Piper, helped organize a reunion to help a lot of people remember what might well have been forgotten otherwise,

On Saturday some 40 people from a special fraternity gathered at the Fredonia Township Hall to celebrate the first school memories many of them had ever known, according to the Battle Creek Enquirer.

They all went to the Bush School, a one-room schoolhouse south of Marshall and a place where many of them grew up and grew into the people they would become.

The school, which closed in 1968, still stands, sort of, on the side of Old 27 on property owned by John and Laura Miller.

The years have not been kind to the building and it’s in such bad shape now that the Millers won’t allow anyone inside for safety reasons.

But the memories? Those never fall apart.

“We’ve seen so many people we haven’t seen in so long,” Piper said. “You talk to them and then it’s, ‘Oh, now I know who you are.’ It’s wonderful.”

The school opened early in the 20th century and educated kids from around Lyon Lake and south of Marshall. And those who could make it gathered Saturday afternoon to relive those memories and to share the stories that reminded so many of them how important that time in their lives had been.

Sisters Vicky Coats and Cathy Kneeshaw, both of whom still live not far from where they went to school, recalled how everyone in their immediate and extended family attended Bush School, including their grandfather.

“A lot of good memories,” Coats said.

Both sisters roared with laughter as they recalled how they were constantly being disciplined in school.

“We talked too much,” Coats said, pointing to her sister and adding. “She was always disrupting class.”

Kneeshaw, who went to the Bush School from 1955-64 and a year behind her sister, recalled how special it was to be in such small classes, which sometimes consisted of three or four students.

“You got closer because you’re all together,” she said, looking around at the gathering. “A lot of people you recognize but some you have to look at their nametags.”

Two of the older attendees were 92-year-old Marshall resident Dan Willerick and Larry Reincke, 76, who came to the reunion from his home in Ada.

And Reincke brought one of his prized possession, an old brown General Electric radio he won as a seventh-grader in 1950, his last year at Bush.

He recalled how for a half-hour every school day students would listen to Prairie Farm Radio, beamed in from WLS in Chicago. The station had an essay contest, “What Citizenship
Means to Me,” and Reincke entered. His essay was judged one of the best in the nation and his prize was a new radio.

“My God, it was like winning the lottery,” he said. “I won one for myself and one for the school. I don’t know what happened to the school’s.”

But his has survived and he said proudly, “It still works.”

He was thrilled to be able to attend and to remember a time that was so important in his life.

“I have fond memories of the old school,” he said simply.

There were also remembrances sent in by those who could not attend.

The daughter of one teacher, Marie Hillabrant who taught at Bush in 1925-26, recalled her mom recounting the tale of the infamous frozen pump handle.

Because “boys will be boys,” she wrote, one boy stuck his tongue to the pump and, of course, it stuck. As Willabrant ran to get hot water to set him free, the boy took matters into own hands — with a painful result.

Another letter came from the daughter of beloved music and dance teacher Betty “Miss Betty” Dukavas, who taught at Bush and more than 20 rural schools from 1949-69. The letter brought tears to the eyes of several former students.

For Piper and Cook, the reunion was the culmination of months of work and research.

“I’m just excited,” Cook said. “I knew it was inevitable we’d get it done.”

And, already there are plans for another reunion next year because, after all, there are always more memories.