The library served as the gym and cafeteria"¦the grounds were surrounded by cherry orchards"¦teachers earned $3,000 a year"¦ bus drivers took their buses home with them at night.
Current and former students, parents and staff at Cherry Knoll Elementary School reminisced about the past during the school's 50th birthday celebration. Held Friday at the school and featuring a special luncheon and assembly, the party took attendees on a stroll through the history of the school built near the corner of Three Mile and Hammond roads.
"I'm the seventh principal of Cherry Knoll, not too many for 50 years," said Linda Barker, opening the assembly. "All the people here today have a special connection to Cherry Knoll Elementary School."
With six nearby one-room or small schools bursting at the seams, the community decided to build Cherry Knoll in 1955 at the height of the Baby Boom. The one-room Courtade, Scheck, Potter, Black and Haney schools and the four-room Birmley School were all consolidated into the new Cherry Knoll Independent School District, which was formed in 1956. The K-7 grade school, which covered a large geographic area from the Boardman
River to the Kalkaska County line, was dedicated in January of the following year.
The height of the post-war Baby Boom, students moved into a school that was already too small. This prompted officials to send third and fourth grades back to the Birmley School until an addition could be built. Five more additions have since been completed at Cherry Knoll, which now serves 370 students in grades pre-K through 6.
Dr. Raymond Bohrer, a member of the original first grade class at Cherry Knoll, told the assembly Friday afternoon that he lived on Garfield Road within view of the Birmley School. But he took six bus rides a day during third and fourth grade because of overcrowding at the new facility.
"I rode the bus to school, then caught a bus to the Birmley School," he recalled. "They had no cafeteria at Birmley so we rode the bus to Cherry Knoll for lunch and then back. Then we got on the bus to Cherry Knoll in the afternoon to catch the bus back home."
He also recalled the bus drivers taking the bus home at night, including his Uncle Ed, who lived next door. Bohrer would go over on Sundays and help his two cousins wax the bus.
He told students of the 'goofy bounces' off ceiling beams his peers contended with in the gym/cafeteria — now the library — when playing ball games there.
"When we had sports or any activity [in the gym], the students had to move all the tables and chairs out of the way," added Bohrer. "And, of course, we couldn't go home after basketball practice until we put it all back."
Volunteers compiled scrapbooks of memorabilia all winter and the cafeteria Friday was transformed into a history walk. Photos, documents, yearbooks, newspaper articles and other items were organized on tables by decades and visitors paged through items to rekindle memories.
Former student Sandy Olman attended the school from the second through seventh grade during the 1950s and early 60s, previously attending the small Birmley school.
"I liked the one-room school, of course, there was so much more to do when we moved over to the big one," she recalled while checking out the 1950s scrapbooks. "I have a nephew here now."
Fourth grade teacher Doris Rice, formerly Miss Wilson, started at the school in 1956. She was pleased at the annual salary of $3,000 and taught at the school for five years.
"I thought that was great, I was fresh out of college," said Rice, who went on to teach at Long Lake and Sabin Elementary schools before retiring in 1989.
The assembly also featured a 8-mm film taken in 1956 by Don Wright, the first bus driver at the school. Wright captured field trips to the sand dunes, ice skating parties, picnics, baseball games and scouting events. The film also shows footage of the Mackinac Bridge under construction during a field trip to Fort Michilimackinac.
Bob Brott has been connected with Cherry Knoll Elementary School for 50 years. First as a student there and then through two grown sons and two younger ones. He regaled the assembly with stories of pranks, including the time he and his brother brought a live squirrel on the bus and released it. The riders screamed and the driver pulled over, eventually chasing the squirrel out the back.
"We got in quite a bit of trouble over that but, being a lawyer, I blamed it on my little brother," he said.