In 1980, I finished up my fourth-grade school year on a very good note, and at that time Mom and I were staying with my grandmother in Augusta, WV. However, Mom was anxious to get her own place, and a couple of years earlier a co-worker had introduced her to a wealthy lady by the name of Nellie Cox in the nearby community of Kirby, and after contacting her, Mom was able to rent a 2-bedroom single-wide mobile home in Kirby itself. It was quite a transition for us, but it was also the beginning of a 5-year part of my own life in which I would forge much of the identity I have today.
My first introduction to Grassy Lick came in September 1980, when I began school there. The school itself was only a 5-minute walk from our house, and it was nothing to get there of a morning. However, it also became a huge challenge, because I was about to have my first male teacher, Guy Dispanet Jr. Mr. Dispanet was a BIG man with a flattop crewcut who resembled that mean Marine drill seargeant that some vets remember from their boot camp days. And, he was about as strict as he looked - recess was not playing for our class, but rather about physical education. A typical recess with this man entailed an initial lap or two around the large field in back of the school, and then everyone in the class was required to play ball - softball in the early fall and spring, football and basketball in the late fall, and during the winter months it was indoor gymnastic-like activities. Oh, how I hated that then too! Also, the huge transition of us moving to Kirby, and our own abject poverty at the time, made my fifth-grade school year one of the roughest I have had to date, and as a result I had to repeat the fifth grade the following year. It was then that things began to get better, as Dispanet, despite his strictness, really knew how to bring out the best in students he believed in, and he took that sort of interest in me.
This was my 1981-1982 class picture - I am third from the right on the top row, and Mr. Dispanet, our teacher, is on the top far-left. The other lady was Miss Loretta Snyder, the teacher-aide.
(photo courtesy of Mary Haines Orndorf, a former classmate who is second from left on the top row)
The three years I spent under Dispanet's tutelage really made me discover a lot about my own potential, and he really did have a heart for the students he taught despite the strictness. However, he was also very quick to discipline if necessary, as was evident by a long pointed stick he kept up on an atlas podium he stood at when teaching - if you were within reach of him and were slacking off, he would crack you with that stick too! In time however, if you really worked in class and proved yourself, you would also gain Dispanet's respect, and if you got that, it was a high honor (at least to us as pre-teen fifth and sixth graders!).
Let me tell you a little that I have learned about the history of Grassy Lick School. The building we were in at the time was the third version of it, having been constructed in 1951. Two earlier schools, one going back to the early 1900's, existed as well. The building we knew had three classrooms, along with a connecting hallway in front, a kitchen, and restrooms, and it was staffed at the time by six people - three teachers (Mrs. Hott, who also served as principal, taught the first and second grades, Mrs. Iser taught third and fourth grades, and Mr. Dispanet taught fifth and six), a cook (Treva Haines), a janitor (Junior Timbrook), and a teacher's aide (Mrs. Snyder). There were no gym teachers (Mr. Dispanet compensated for a lot of that!) and an itinerant music teacher visited once a week (Mr. Likens was the original in 1980, later followed by Mrs. Mezzatesta later). Two small buses served the school - one traveled up Grassy Lick Road toward Romney and was driven by Edgel Souder, and the other went back toward Augusta and was driven by Junior Pyles. Many of us kids in town though just walked to school, as we lived so close. Looking back on it, the experience was actually quite enriching honestly, and I loved it.
The older Grassy Lick School, located I believe further up Grassy Lick Road - this one was around since the 1920's at least.
(Photo courtesy of Cindy Racey Twigg, another former classmate and a professional photographer)
An older black-and-white picture of the current Grassy Lick School I went to, taken sometime after its construction in the early 1950's
Grassy Lick School (now Grassy Lick Kirby Community Center) as it appears today.
(Photo courtesy of Tara Jane Racey Riggleman)
As I mentioned, my years at Grassy Lick got off to a rough start, but they ended up being a very good time in my life as I transitioned from childhood to adolescence. I have fond memories now of the school, and thanks to social media such as Facebook I am now also in touch with many of my old classmates, and we share stories of those days. Grassy Lick alumni are relatively few in number (an average class back then was at max 25 students, with maybe 50 at any given time in the whole school), but that limited number of us makes us all closer in our experience. Unfortunately though, much change has come, and I want to conclude by talking a little about the change.
Economic ups and downs are a stark reality in small-town West Virginia, and in the late 1990's many counties started to feel the pinch, forcing them to re-evaluate their educational structures. Many schools ended up closing and consolidating with other nearby communities, and Grassy Lick School fell casuality to that around the year 2000 or so. Also, in 1993 we lost Mr. Dispanet, as a debilitating illness claimed his life, and that too was a tremendous loss. I was fortunate to be able to talk to him by phone a few months before his passing, and it was a nice trip down memory lane as we talked about his memories of many of us in the class, and about the school in general. He confided in me that teaching in that school was not one of his first choices of career, but that he would not trade the rich memories he gained for anything. In the past few years, much of Kirby has closed up too - Cox's Store for one - and the school was turned into a local community center where a number of local activities are held throughout the years. This reclamation of the old school is actually a good preservation move, as it keeps alive the legacy of what was one of the last small schools of its kind up until the dawn of the 21st century. And, it was my pleasure to share this memory with you as you read this, and hopefully it will help many of you appreciate your own elementary school days better too.
I, too, went to Grassy Lick, and was just a few years behind you. My parents and many friends still live in the area, and it's good to go back. I recently watched my daughter play on the same playground equipment that I had enjoyed as a child, and that's a wonderful memory. The school has been converted to a community center and still retains much of the same character it did as a school.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the memories!