Classmates Recall One-Room Schools

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"The one-room schoolhouse. I think, was a wonderful thing, "Mrs. Woodard said. She looked around the room and pointed out some former students.

"I'm real proud of the way they turned out."

About 20 turned out this year, fewer than half the usual number who gather for the annual reunion of the Nine Mile and Oak Hill elementary schools. The reunion was yesterday at the Ohio River Road Volunteer Fire Hall in Lesage.

The classmates ate fresh peach pie, its crust made by magic. Some were swooning over a summer squash casserole dish Mary Morehouse Dean brought. She flew up from Lantana, Fla.

Between mouthfuls, they talked about their school days. Nine Mile closed in 1934, Oak Hill in '52. One classroom each, but memories enough for a feast.

"We had to carry our water in buckets," collected from neighbors, remembered Jesse "Jack" Riley, an Oak Hill alumnus from Letart near Point Pleasant.

Nolan Fowler, a '28 graduate of Nine Mile school, came with his wife from Cookville, Tenn. He saw a classmate and urged his wife over to meet her. "This is my wife Ruby, Ruby, this is Frances Simpson, used to be Frances Blanchard. Your hair was real blonde back then," he said.

Mrs. Simpson carried a old photo of 41 children posing rough-and-tumble in front of the Nine Mile school, an American flag tacked above its doorway. Their teacher stood behind them to the right. "There I am," Mrs. Simpson said, pointing to a pretty, fresh-faced little girl in the middle.

Mabel Langdon, who taught the last semester at Nine Mile in 1934 and the last seven years at Oak Hill from 1945-52, said one-room schoolhouses began to vanish when buses started to run. Consolidation began in 1934, she said.

She taught eight grades daily in the classroom. The primary school children came in the morning, the intermediate in the afternoon. A 9 to 4 school day included recess and lunch time, when the children skated on the frozen pond or played on the hillside playground.

Teaching was "largely from textbooks. We integrated as many subjects as possible." She said she had very few discipline problems.

Mrs. Simpson pointed out another little girl in her picture. "There's Eloise Bowman. We were pretty buddies. Her desk was next to the stove. I asked to borrow her Crayolas and they dripped on the floor. We laughed so hard, the teacher made us stand" in front of the class.

Mrs. Woodard said the one-room classroom worked flexibly. A 4th grader who wanted to go faster could absorb what the 6th graders were learning, or could drop back if there was something he missed, she said.

"We had a lot of competitions. Spelling matches, even at night. People from far and wide would come and take sides. And we crowned the champion." She said she borrowed 25 books a week at the public library and piled them on a reading table in the schoolhouse.

Mrs. Woodard was barely older than some of her students in those days. She finished her 35 years of teaching at Lincoln Elementary several years ago. Yesterday, piled in front of her were wrapped gifts she was to give to some of her students, symbols of her days of teaching when, she said of all one-room school teachers, "We gave them the best we had."

Newspaper article written by Diana Jones
From The Herald Dispatch
Huntington, W. Va.
August 18, 1980

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