The whirring noise of the bricks when our car’s tires turned from Losey Street onto Kellogg Street is still in my head after all these 69 years. Those bricks are gone now, as is the home where I grew up. The hospital across the street from 692 North Kellogg bought our house and turned our whole neighborhood into a parking lot.
I loved that two-story house with a coal bin in the basement during the 1950s, and a cherry tree sporting a home-made swing in the backyard. But now it’s gone, except in my memory, and the memories of a very few relatives. I’m sure if that house were still sitting there on the lot between the houses of friendly neighbors, I would think it was terribly old. But I remember every nook and cranny of both the house and the neighborhood. It’s permanently mapped in my head even though it no longer exists. I spent much more time there than I did in my elementary school.
Yesterday, I went back to see the grade school where I spent my first five years before being transferred for sixth grade to another school closer to home. Silas Willard School was built in 1912, and next summer they will begin demolishing it so students can go to a cleaner-and probably healthier- building already constructed next door. In all seriousness, I wasn’t sure what I even remembered about the building since I hadn’t been in it since 1957. Curiously, I have few photographs of that time nor composite pictures of my classes and teachers, so I couldn’t even look at those before I checked out the old building.
I had rather ambivalent feelings about this whole adventure since it was a blank in my mind. But just walking into the building and down the first hallway, I felt punched in the gut. It was familiar and emotional even if my brain seemed devoid of memories.
Fortunately, I ran into a friend from those years just inside the door. Neal Gensini shared all twelve years of my school days in District 205, Galesburg, Illinois, and I’m glad his memory was stronger than mine. Strangely, however, my body seemed to find its way of its own accord.
Neal and I both remembered first grade the best, and that’s the room we found on the east side of the building. You see, this room definitely seemed familiar, but mostly we remembered our teacher. Miss Jaeschke was our very first elementary school teacher, and she was young and pleasant and smiled a lot. She taught us how to read, opening up the world to us, and I’ve never stopped reading. But most importantly—as Neal and I agreed—she made us feel confident and cared for in this new part of our life away from our homes and parents. I still remember she hugged us when we left each day.
Later years in that school came and went. In the building yesterday, remembered thoughts came back in pieces and parts. Our second and third grade experiences were not so memorable, but in fourth grade, we were in a basement room we thought of as the dungeon. We were the first of the Boomer generation, you see, and the schools couldn’t handle the influx of numbers. So we were stashed away in a small basement room which, even today, looks quite dingy and un-memorable. I imagine even the hallways were crowded back then.
The gym yesterday with furniture and objects one could buy.
Fifth grade was a nightmare. We were in the gymnasium with other classes, sitting at desks in this huge room with no partitions or walls, and the noise was dreadful. The school had run out of room for us. I remember being in this gym, too, for polio shots and eventually the little containers of vaccine we drank. These were the Cold War years when polio vaccine seemed like a miracle. So I certainly remembered this gym, with a kitchen on the north end that had an upright piano where I took lessons.
The playground on the east side was also familiar. Boys and girls had separate playgrounds, and I remember playing hopscotch on the east sidewalk. In first grade, when the bell rang, we went in the east door and up the stairs to our classroom.
The library with the round wall toward the right
On the second floor was the library, and that was the most wonderful place of all because it had books. Neal and I both remembered really positive feelings in that room with its south window that was—amazing to us—round. Today, I could imagine tables in that room, and shelves of books on the south and west sides of the room. But there were not lots of shelves, because books weren’t as plentiful as they are now. I can still remember we learned to read with “Dick and Jane” books.
The last place we went was outside to see the sign in front and the door 
we used to walk in on the south side of the building.
People, yesterday, had a lot of opinions about this building that had meant so much in our lives. Some were sad that it would be torn down, and others were of the opinion that its time had come and gone. I was appalled, frankly, that it looked so much like it did in 1952 when I arrived there as a first grader. Granted, the shelves and furniture had all been torn out or taken out, which didn’t exactly add to the ambiance. But it appeared to me that the building we had loved was not updated or cared for like it should have been over all those years.
I have thought about this whole experience since yesterday morning. It’s a lot to process. What really existed inside that building, all those years ago, were my hopes and dreams and understandings of life and happy days and sad days and friends and playground alliances and rejections and fears and tears and smiles. None of those will be torn down over the summer, but the place where I experienced them will be gone.
One less building from my childhood that helps me remember.
My second grade class. (I’m third from the left, front row. Neal is third from the right, back row.)Of course, girls wore dresses.
slate blackboards
Our first grade classroom
Fourth grade in the dungeon
The east/west hallway on the first floor.
South front entrance
Our third grade room
Another part of Galesburg’s history is the Roof Garden, where people went to dance in the 1930s and 1940s, on the roof of the Weinberg Arcade. My latest mystery on Kindle, The Locket: From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney, is about a fictional murder connected to that venue. You can order it on Amazon.com, here.
First, let me tell you, Susan, how much I love the pictures and your narrative. Even though I never went to Silas, it was a kind of sentimental journey for me, for as you were attending Silas, about a mile and a half or so away I was attending Farnham School. Fortunately, Farnham was spared the wrecking ball because it was purchased by the Older Citizens of Knox County and now houses that organization’s activities.
Secondly, allow me to vent:
The “old” Silas Willard School has stood for decades. On the other hand, those responsible for the construction of the new building bragged that the new structure would “last for twenty years.” Wow! Twenty years! My sister had a cat that lived that long.
Sure, the “old” Silas building has issues–because of its age and apparent neglect by 205, it has issues. However, attorneys John Rehn and Doug Mustain presented a thorough plan to renovate the “old” Silas, bringing it up to 21st century standards for less money than constructing the “new” Silas.
Less money! Twenty-first century standards! Makes sense, right? But whenever in recent years has Galesburg Community School District #205 done anything that’s logical? Like never.
Oh, wait a minute. It did do something logical. The administration and board had a moment of lucidity a few years back and renovated Lombard into a very nice edifice. I applaud them for that, if not much else. Why couldn’t they have done the same with Silas? (I am open for plausible answers.}
But, here we are, back to silly business as usual: once again this community’s establishment will take the wrecking ball to a structure that has architectural character and durability, replacing it with an eyesore that will last two decades–just in time for the out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new crowd to replace the “new” Silas with a “newer” Silas.
As for history: Forget about it!
On the record, I never voted for Ronald Reagan, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me and my politics. But, hey, he was a president—like it or not, he was MY president for eight years of my life. And, as I understand it, he went to school for almost two years right there in “old” Silas; and that fact deserves more than a wrecking ball reducing his school house to a pile of shattered bricks. Besides, if folks can’t find enough pride in the fact that The Gipper was an “old” Silas alum, citizens of 205 ought to be mercenary enough to want to make a few tourism bucks off the building where President Reagan learned his A-B-C’s, and 1-2-3’s.
But, it is not to be, and I don’t blame the Silas teachers for crying over that “old” school house being smashed to the ground–and over the destruction of history and common sense.
DISCLAIMER: It should be noted that no one in the current administration was involved in making the decision to knock down the old Silas building and build a new one. Also, only one of the current board members was on the board at the time 205 moved forward with its “Rebuild” venture, and that board member stood opposed to that massive construction program.
FURTHER EXPLANATION: I received a message telling me that a second member of the current board may have been sitting on the board at the time of the building decision. I have not confirmed that; also, if the person was on the board at that time, I don’t know what that board member’s position was on the issue.
It’s funny how much we hang on to buildings and history from our home towns, Jim. I find it ironic that the high school building in Monmouth,where I taught, was renovated in the early 1980s for much less than it would have cost to build a new building. The Monmouth District has never been a rich district, and they have always had to watch every penny and dime. So I think they decided to go with your idea, and it has paid off immensely.
I can empathize with you, as I am a member of the “other” first grade class in the building at the same time your class was going to Silas Willard, I started in Sept 1951 and left in May 1958 to go on to Churchill Jr. High. First grade through sixth grade with different teachers than you had. As I look at your second grade class picture I see Gordon Rosine in the middle in the back row and of course Neal Gensini who I met at Churchill. Time is erasing the memories for I find it hard to put names to others. I went to the open house Saturday to reminisce and visit the school I had so cherished along with all the other childhood memories of people and places that are gone. I was in Mrs. Stotts first grade class in the room with the round alcove and the closets for our coats and hats hidden behind the blackboards and the fireplace along the wall that never saw a fire going when I was there. Was this supposed to be the way of every room in every classroom all through school? Of course not, because the second grade was spent in what you called the “dungeon” with Mrs. Meyers who spent her career at Silas Willard. Oh what great memories. In my class I remember every one that was in it, one very remarkable person was Mary Francis Salisbury whose dad was the superintendent of schools and was there with us for a few years and left, I can only imagine because her dad moved on to a bigger and better school district.
Hi, Dennis, and thanks so much for leaving a comment. I remember the first day of first grade Gordon Rosine had a cast on his arm, and he was very self-conscious about it! I agree with you that the memories aren’t as vivid as they used to be, but I found that walking through that building brought back a lot of thoughts that had been buried a long time. I remember Mrs. Stotts even though she wasn’t my teacher, and I remember Mary Francis Salisbury.I have really happy memories from that time, as well as the fear that I would be late for school. I used to live across from Cottage Hospital on Kellogg, so I had a long way to walk, and I’d pick up Vicki Firof on Seminary Street so we’d walk together. It wasn’t uphill in snow like the old cliche, but it was a good, long walk. No wonder we got a lot more exercise back then. Thanks for stopping in and reminding me of more memories.
Please contact me by email if you would like, I should know you from jr. high
I enjoyed reading your memories of elementary school. I agree that digging up those memories can be emotional! “Time marches on “, as they used to say in at the end of the newsreel at the movies.?
Thanks, Helen. Unfortunately, the older we get, the more these memory markers disappear. However, it was an interesting day, and I was glad to remember some of the events that happened there before the school is gone. Has this happened to you? Buildings from your past gone?