PEA RIDGE — The little white concrete-block building holds dear memories for former Pea Ridge school students.

Its past is fondly remembered. Its future is undecided.

To former school students from the 1940s and 1950s, the building was the lunchroom.

To students from more recent eras, it has been the SEEK (gifted and talented student program) building and the art building, variously.

Slated for demolition by school officials in planning the remodeling of the campus now referred to as the Intermediate School, the century-old building has devotees seeking ways to preserve it.

Several members of the Pea Ridge Historical Society met at the building recently to tour it and discuss possibilities for its use. Maintenance supervisor James Reeves unlocked the building.

Jerry Nichols, vice president of the historical society, graduated from Pea Ridge High School in 1957. There was one brick buildingon the grounds at that time, in addition to the little white house which he knew as the “hot lunch room.”

The school building, constructed in about 1930, was razed in March 2005. That building had housed the entire school until the 1960s when the building now known as theIntermediate School was constructed to house the elementary grades.

Nichols, a ’57 PRHS graduate, and Bob Prophet who attended school in Pea Ridge in the mid 1940s, but did not graduate, both recalled the lunchroom.

The building, constructed of concrete blocks, much like the buildings which comprise downtown now housing City Hall, Webb’s Feed and Seed, the city library and Sanders Computer, was probably constructed about the turn of the century, Nichols said.

“There was a shed over there for the coal,” Prophet remembered, pointing east of the lunchroom. “This is probably the oldest building on the campus.”

In the ’40s or ’50s, the center section was added for a kitchen, he conjectured. “That was added by the end of the war,” he said.

“I never got to each lunch there; we didn’t have the money,” Prophet said, explaining that students who didn’t have 10 cents to pay for lunch, brought their own lunches.

“It’s still listed to be demolished,” Nichols said of the old building and the school district’s plans. “If we had permission granted to use it, I wouldn’t mind seeing it used for civic gathering likes Historical Society, Lions Club and Optimist Club. It’d be a great meeting place.”

“I’d like to see the school have a school heritage site and put up old pictures of the old Pea Ridge schools.

“We’ve talked with Mr.

Van Dyke,” Nichols said,adding that there is much to be considered, including insurance, costs, maintenance, utilities and repairs.

“My mother (Ruth McKinney) was president of the Home Demonstration Club. They used to can food here,” Beulah Prophet said.

Nancy Nichols said: “They used to meet here to can food to feed the kids.”

Nancy also recalled when she was a student at Pea Ridge one of the school children was assigned to walk over to the lunch room building to get a jug of orange juice and bring it to the classroom to serve a glass of orange juice to every student.

News, Pages 1 on 02/09/2011