Old School, Old Soul--Part II

Arthur Lucas Junior High School, Durand, Michigan

Arthur Lucas Junior High School in Durand, Michigan--built in 1920, only two years after the close of World War I and not quite a decade before the Great Depression--was closed as a school in 1996, to be ungraciously abandoned after serving as a great hall of learning for 76 years. Apparently, it was later sold to be converted into apartments. Other than driving past one time a few years after we moved away from Durand, I have not been back to this spacious, stately school since I left it in 1977. My three years there seem to belong to another lifetime, and not only because junior high is now called "middle school."

I went to this school from the sixth through the eighth grade while my father pastored the Free Methodist Church in Durand, Michigan, in the heart of Midwest farmland. The education I received at Arthur Lucas Junior High grounded me all through high school and beyond. Almost all the grammar I know now I learned from Mrs. McConkey in eighth grade. Tim St. John and I competed for the highest scores, which the person who graded our workbooks had to say out loud every day for my teacher to record. That wouldn't even be legal today. Her class was at the end of the hall on the right as you faced the front of the building, perpendicular to the length of the hallway, as if the hall dead-ended at her room. I think she was on the third floor. If I remember correctly, each grade had its own floor, and I remember the auditorium/gymnasium being near the back on the left side of the first floor as you faced the rear of the building. The classrooms seemed very large and always had a lot of natural light, which I sorely miss these days.

Below is the auditorium/gymnasium, where we had our chorus concerts. My first-ever experience as an accompanist was for Mr. Dorey when I was twelve years old. He directed our 120-voice chorus as we sang the hymn, "Fairest Lord Jesus." The four-part harmony was really pretty good. I remember feeling the solemn excitement of playing in front of hundreds of people, and my parents came and beamed upon me. I continued to play songs for our chorus the following year. During one concert, my page turner (a difficult "friend" in my church youth group) flipped my music off the piano. She made it look like an accident, but I knew better. I did not realize until that moment that I had memorized the song. Everyone loved and admired Mr. Dorey. It's always a plus when a manly man exemplifies his love of music and teaches his students to be devoted and disciplined. His musical expertise is a large part of why I minored in music in college.

Life teemed with possibilities in those days, amid all those dreams that adolescent girls weave in their heads at any given moment, day or night. It wouldn't be incorrect to say with Shakespeare that the world was a stage and all the "girls and boys" merely players. Of course, we had our drama, and I remember worrying that some of the girls seemed pretty "hard." I was friendly to everyone but also knew how to keep to myself. I felt like I was constantly filtering in my head things I didn't like or shouldn't hear, and sometimes it was very draining. Still, people were generally pleasant. I vividly remember that autograph books were a "thing" at the end of the year, and people would each sign a page like yearbooks. I sometimes made my own, and I still have them. Life was so simple and so durable then. You didn't have to spend a lot of money to make a lot of memories.

I don't know what happened to this school or why, in my opinion, it died an early death. It seemed in excellent condition at the time and had an intriguing layout that belonged in a movie. With three floors and a large gymnasium/auditorium, it had long hallways that ended in nooks and crannies, as I remember it. It was always full of bodies going this way and that between classes, but I don't remember anyone shoving or tugging like children feel compelled to do now. We actually walked. I think part of the reason for that was that we carried our books and other belongings instead of wearing bookbags that left idle hands to do the devil's work. The same things I loved about Southside I loved about this school--the shiny hardwood floors, transom windows, and radiator heaters but especially the windows. I remember the hallways as light-filled spaces leading to alluring stairwells that not only filled my imagination but fired my inspiration. I didn't know then that I would spend the rest of my life in a school.

Having taught for over 35 years, I find it difficult to believe that the lifespan of a solid, well-built brick building with oak floors, high ceilings, and thick walls could not survive for another 100 years. After all, these schools were built to last, weren't they? And the fact that this one is still standing--even after having been badly abandoned--shows that it hasn't fallen into disuse as a living facility even though it has fallen out of favor as a school. Was it just not safe anymore? How, then, could it be safe as a living facility? Did it just pass out of style with its old blackboards and wooden desks and chair rails and who knows what else? Oh, how I long just to peek inside one more time--but all I have are the vague and blurry snapshots of my own memory. We don't ever think of living life backwards, only of living it forwards. We always think of tomorrow and forget that, by tomorrow, today has become yesterday.

And I guess that's part of why these great historic buildings fell into disuse or disfavor as halls of learning. They didn't seem very "forward-thinking," perhaps. And why not? Well, we all know that "pod-classroom" craze that swept our nation in the late seventies and early eighties. I had to learn about group learning when I did my student teaching--even though I never learned that way myself--well, almost never. Actually, my very first inspiration to teach was born of just such a moment at Southside Elementary School, when I helped my little friend Dale with her reading (see Old School, Old Soul--Part I). I have had to teach in many ways down through the years that are drastically different from the way in which I learned. In fact, I wonder sometimes if I learn differently now than I did then just because I've had to teach that way.

When I hear the words, "old school," I know what people mean, but, to me, the words are literal. The imagery--the appeal to the senses--that is lost with these old buildings is truly irreplaceable. If I sat and thought about it all day, I wouldn't be able to recapture the sounds, the smells, the textures, the winter chill, the sunlight, the smell of Pine-Sol on the hardwood floors, and the musty smell of cloak rooms, the clink and clang of metal lunchboxes sporting the popular cartoon characters of the day, or the pink elastic book straps we used to tie our books together with, or the lazy squeak of the swing set at recess time. Or even the mystery of climbing three flights of stairs that I still dream about to this day--that they break off and lead to nowhere, requiring me to take leaps from one flight to another. Going up three flights of stairs each day in eighth grade seemed symbolic of change--as if we could reach the stars.

But I still can't get out of my mind that these great buildings were wasted, their potential blighted by--something. Neglect? Severe weather? Outdated safety codes? Maybe it was cheaper to build a new school with those fashionable pods and fake walls. Or maybe the tax dollars just stopped flowing, so that these schools could no longer be graciously updated. But what I really want to know is what we have abandoned with these old buildings? How can generations of an entire way of life just pass away of sudden heart failure, as it were? Was it a slow death, after all? What role did the revolutions of the sixties play or desegregation or--and the list goes on, I guess. Now, these schools wouldn't even be safe because they wouldn't have built-in sprinklers or camera surveillance or properly locking doors. They might have had asbestos ceiling tiles or lead paint on the woodwork (oh, for a school with natural wood--you never see that anymore except on a gymnasium floor) or a contaminated water supply.

But what else is missing that it would be impossible to reconstruct or recapture? And I guess for me that's the question. Does the building indeed determine the way you learn? Do structure and substance go hand in hand, such that, when the building gets old, the methodology does, too? Or vice versa? But then again, why are we always tweaking the soul out of education? Why does it seem like we just can't leave it alone--that we have to keep fixing what isn't broken--necessarily--instead of fixing what is broken--like families and churches and neighborhoods? But the school always seems to take the fall for society because we would appear to value education so much that we think it can fix everything.

But if we can't even fix our school buildings, can we really fix anything else?

One of my favorite pictures--Out for the Summer!