Fairview 1.0

Let’s face it.  We’re the last generation for whom the original Fairview, at the northwest corner of Fairview Ave. and Catalpa Dr. will bear any significance, even if ever so tenuous.  Once our lease expires, any shoeboxes of Fairview-stuff handed down from our grandparents to our parents, will find their way from our attics to the landfill or recycler.  Fact of life.

But there is apparently still an attachment.  I’ve attended a number of 50th reunions over the past years, often with Mr. Bruggeman in tow, and there always seemed to be some level of fascination with knowing how our Fairview got to be that way.  It’s in our nature to stay connected to our past.  Imprinting, perhaps.

Another brutal truth in this little morality play is that there isn’t a single person alive today who went to that high school, that was, in it’s time, properly referred to as North Harrison Township High School.  It is, however, remotely possible that there’s a ninety-something out there who would have been in the building when it was also a grade school until 1925.  

High school, back around the turn of that century, was a completely different kettle of fish in a world that bore little semblance to the one we call home.  The hyperbolic curve of technology versus time was hitting its stride.  I wouldn’t want to say that attending a high school was elitist, but it just wasn’t viewed as being a real-world necessity.  In a mostly agrarian society, pragmatism ruled the day and that meant knowing just enough to help your family work the farm.  It took parents who had the luxury of strategic, far-sighted vision, to make the decision to incur the expense and inconvenience of sending their children to high school.

By and large, what you needed to know and any socialization that time allowed, remained the province of the home.  So it can be little surprise that the class that graduated in 1903 had three students, and the one surviving alumnus who was interviewed in 1960 said he did not know a single other child in the neighborhood where he grew up who went to school as he did.  The times were much much closer to an episode of Gunsmoke than anything near and dear to our hearts. 

That first school building, while it had eight rooms, was mostly an elementary school, as the needs of the community and society dictated.  Grades nine through twelve were relegated to one large room on the second floor.  The staff, as legend goes, consisted of one man ... Daniel W. Klepinger, earning $100 per month ... so I’m thinking he was not the member of any collective bargaining unit.  It was two years before circumstances allowed for any addition to the ranks.

While modern for its day, the new building did have electric lighting and central coal heat, but plumbing was, shall we say, a bit more remote ... two outhouses and one pump atop an outside well.   I’ll avoid the cheap shot here.  Winter had to be a real treat, as students would either walk or ride on horseback to get there from distances up to seven miles away.  I have no information as to whether it was, as our parents would tell their story, in the dark, in waist-deep snow, uphill both ways. 

The precious few photographs of the building we have, seem to convey something from The Addams Family to us, but I have no doubt it was a thing of rare and wondrous beauty to those lucky enough to attend.  It would have had its own special majesty sitting there on the corner, surrounded as it was by large trees, houses and farms.  "Bucolic" is the word I’m looking for.

Look very very closely and you won’t see a single sign announcing the facility as a drug and weapon-free area.

But in its own way, progress was inexorable.   It wasn’t long before a traction line would come up Fairview Ave from Main Street, on its way out to Greenville providing a mechanized link to civilization.  During the pre-war years -- that’s WWI, for those of you who like to count them -- growth at the high school was measured, but steady, as staff and curriculum continued to increase in size, commensurate with the expectations of the community.  

But the concept of high school and its place in our cultural ethos remained essentially the same.  Take a look at the accompanying photo from the class of 1913 and let me know how many smiling faces you see.  Education was still a privilege for the committed few and the suitable-for-framing photogenicity we now embrace did not exist.  The largest graduating class prior to the war still numbered well south of twenty.

In 1912, the school was almost closed, as the thinking was that the few students could just as easily find their way to either Steele or Stivers.  It took an intense lobbying campaign on the part of the students and the community to defeat that effort.  Had that not happened, you wouldn’t be reading this now.

But as it is want to do, the war changed the face of society, and how it felt about secondary education for the masses was part of that dynamic.  And as you would expect, that was accompanied by a marked demographic shift from most nearby families working in farming or allied interests to a majority living in the city and working jobs in the manufacturing sector.

I have no doubt that the returning veterans had expectations quite different from their parents or even older siblings.  Education became something more of a birthright and there was a nascent understanding that doing well in the world was increasingly dependent on having the skills to get the good, new jobs.  Granted, this was still a strongly agricultural and manufacturing society, but it was clear that formal education was needed to run those businesses that would ultimately drive the economy.  Graduating classes quickly ballooned to about sixty students.

From all accounts, our Mr. Don Longnecker and Miss Theresa Folger were the right people at the right time to read that writing on the wall when they signed-on in the early ‘20s.  Both were fresh out of college and seemed to have a sense that a comprehensive academic and developmental program could turn young adolescents into world-ready young adults.  (I seem to recall a banner with words to that effect at Third & Main in our version of Fairview)  Up to this time, the school had a new principal every year or two, so it was hard for any strategic vision to get traction and as it was still a township school, consistency was hard to come by.  A forty year tenure would be their validation.

What was day-to-day life like in the school?  I wish I knew.  The courses offered would be familiar to us today ... Latin, algebra, geometry, history, home ec, social science, english, chemistry, french, economics, biology.  Sports and extra-curricular activities became more prevalent with time.  The bond between teachers and students was something as strong and lasting as what we would recognize in our time. 

Almost certainly the wood and plaster interior had its own bits and pieces of endearing charm.  As students went up and down the curved stairwell and through the halls, there would have been creaks and groans that you could count on hearing every time.  And, too, there would have been small knotholes or splits in the wood railing that your hand would have subconsciously sought out in its quest for reassurance and comfort.  In their own way, those idiosyncrasies contributed to the character that became part of what that Fairview meant to those in attendance.

One great tradition seemed to involve the graduating class making its way up a ladder into the bell tower and carving their names and year into the wood up there.   A bit of good-natured hazing involved sophomores using the local well pump to douse incoming freshmen.   No doubt zero-tolerance would put an end to both those in the light of today’s inability not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. 

Cafeteria, not so much.  The gym and auditorium didn’t come along until 1925, when it was becoming evident that bigger and better needed to be part of the game plan.  The school colors were changed to blue and gold when then, as now, no one could come up with a word rhyming with orange.

1925 addition of gym and auditorium

   

A new Fairview, our Fairview, happened in the late ‘20s and all too soon, the old Fairview was razed to make way for the iconic Tudor fire station we remember.  But you have to ask yourself ... will we think of the library being built on the site of our Fairview the same way as students of that first Fairview thought of the fire station?  

My hope?  On one fine Saturday evening in the late summer of 2052, when the Fairview High School class of 1982 celebrates its seventieth reunion, one person will stand and tell this tale one final time before it’s allowed to fade to black and gently join the oblivion left over from the creation.