Our great old tree by the School Heritage Building didn’t have much to say last Saturday, but several folks did contribute to our collection of family histories, and we did hear about beaucoups of happenings in and around the building over the years. The “If This Tree Could Talk” History Day Program on May 18 was a very enjoyable and interesting day, and everyone’s participation is appreciated. This was not intended to be a onetime thing. It was an effort on our part to show the kinds of contributions we are interested in as we try to “gather” the historical stories and family stories of our home communities around Pea Ridge.
One of the very interesting talks on Saturday was given by Mrs. Wanda Roe, who along with her husband, Roy Roe, former superintendent of schools, gave a great many years of effective leadership for Pea Ridge Schools. For many years, after the Pea RIdgeschools had grown too large to use our concrete block building as the cafeteria, the building became Mrs. Roe’s developmental headquarters. She was often implementing new programs and new ideas, some dreamed up by herself, and some at the urging of her husband. The School Heritage Building soon became the high school counselor’s headquarters, the home of the school’s art department, and eventually the home of the school excellence program known as the S.E.E.K. program. Mrs.
Roe said she became certified to teach in six different curriculum areas; not intentionally, but because when Mr. Roe would go to meetings and seminars and come back with new ideas and programs for the high school, he tended to cometo her, saying, “Wanda, I need someone to start this new program. Could you take courses this summer and get certified so we can initiate this program this fall?’
As many of us in the Pea Ridge area came through school in the 1940s and 1950s, we were then rated as a B school. During the Roes’ leadership the school’s classification moved up to an A rating, and began the steady upward progress which continues today.
Following up a talk by Wanda Roe is a daunting thing to do, but I had been requested to talk about School History highlights.
We so far have been unable to pin down just when our building was constructed.
We do know that it was serving as the vocational agriculture classroom and school shop when Russell Walker started school in Pea Ridge in 1929. Russell went to school at Shady Grove, northwest of Pea Ridge, through the sixthgrade. Faye Price was teaching then at Shady Grove. Shady Grove was consolidated with Pea Ridge in 1929, and that was the last year of school at Shady Grove. Mrs. Faye Price continued on teaching in the Pea Ridge elementary grades for many years. She was THE first grade teacher for years during the late 1940s and 1950s. In the 1940s it was very common for our school classes to have two grades in each classroom.
That might be considered to be a step up from having six grades in a rural oneroom school. It is pretty amazing to realize that in 2013, each grade in our Pea Ridge schools may have four or five sections, using four or five classrooms.
Our schools today occupy four campuses, and the school buildings on each of the campuses are all larger than the entire school building was in 1955. We used to graduate 10 to 15 seniors each year. I think this year our High Schoolgraduated almost 120.
If our building was built as late as 1928, our tree would have to be 85 years old now to have seen it go up.
Our building’s blocks suggest that it was built in the same general period as the buildings across in town, from the Tetrick Building, which is now City Hall, past Webb’s Feed and Seed, to the corner building now owned by Diana Collins. Russell Walker tells us that Mr. Tetrick, (Charles “Charlie” Tetrick), had a form for making concrete blocks, and that each block was formed individually to construct those buildings.
Each block has a distinctive raised and sculptured face.
We know that the old bank building was built in 1911, and we think the buildings in that row were erected between 1911 and 1928.
If we are correct that our building was first built as a vocational education building, that suggests a date after 1917. The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 led to vocationaleducation programs in public schools across the nation. The timing of that movement for programs like agri-shop, home economics, carpentry, welding, typing and other trade skills leads us to think that our School Heritage Building was probably built in the mid-1920s, before the Great Depression of 1929.
I’m hoping that some of our readers who were in and around Pea Ridge in the 1920s will share with us what they remember of this gray block building standing across the campus from “town” back in the 1920s.
Contact Jerry Nichols by email at [email protected], or call him at 479-621-1621.
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 05/29/2013