ONE-ROOMERS REMINISCE

Dry Creeker, Wanda (Sanderson) Pointer, looks through a photo album filled with school memories. Pointer's father-in-law, Robert Pointer, bought the Dry Creek School property about 1947 and used the school house to store his seeder. Its present owner is Marshall Kilby of Summerville. Wanda Pointer and her husband, Bob, were involved in the 1996 organizing of annual reunions for the combined one-room schools in this area. (Photo/Trish Yerges).

- Story and photos

- by Trish Yerges

SUMMERVILLE — If you were Clifton "Duck" Slack of Perry and 93 years old, you might wonder as he did, "Who's left to attend this one-room school reunion anyway?"

Well, curiosity got the best of him, so with a stiff felt hat in one hand and an oxygen tank in the other, he went to find out.

On Sept. 9, about 30 students representing Dry Creek, Pleasant Grove, Summerville, Willow Creek and Iowa schools gathered at the Summerville Odd Fellows Hall to share a potluck lunch and exchange hearty handshakes, hugs and tall tales that few are alive to refute.

Dry Creek student Stanley Rhoads of Spokane led the reunion. Since 1991, reunions were organized for Dry Creek students only, but then students from other one-room schools began to inquire about attending. Consequently, in 1996, classmates Charles and Doris Rhoads, along with Dorothy and Tom Craig and Bob and Wanda Pointer, organized the first reunion for all of the one-room schools in the Imbler and Summerville district.

After all, "everyone knew everybody" from those early school days, said Billie Vandermulen Gruis of Island City. That's due in great part to the fact that the north valley one-room schools were eventually consolidated and the students were brought together at the Imbler public school.

Today, many of the one-roomers are in their 80s and many reside in the area.

"When you're young, you leave home to explore the world, but when you get old, you want to go back," Gruis said.

Many have done just that, but all agree they could not feel more at home than when they reunite with childhood friends they've known for 70 or more years.

Following are some of the one-roomers' reflections:

Dorothy Vandermulen, 82 Island City

Dorothy is the daughter of Roy and Eva Vandermulen. When she was 5 years old, she was enrolled at Pleasant Grove School.

"They didn't have a kindergarten in those years, so I went right into first grade," she said.

She and her older sister, Wanita, rose early and walked five miles to attend classes.

"When we walked home after school during the winter, mother was always watching for us from the house,'' she said. "As soon as she saw us, she ran to meet us and started rubbing our hands to warm them."

Dorothy remembers Mina Williams as one of her teachers at Pleasant Grove.

Ed O'Mohundro, 81 Salem

Ed is the son of Rosalie and LeRoy O'Mohundro. He attended fourth and fifth grades at Willow Creek School "by the old Hibberd place on Courtney Lane."

Each day he rode his horse to school and tied it in the horse barn.

Ed admitted that he wasn't a serious student, but preferred a little mischief. However, as soon as he got home, it was all work and no play for him because there were 50 cows bellering to be milked before he could relax inside the house.

Billie Vandermulen, 80 Island City

"My parents were one-room school students, too. My dad, Roy, attended Lone Star School and my mother, Eva, attended Dry Creek," said Billie Vandermulen.

She attended seventh grade with about 30 other students at the Iowa School located near the intersection of Booth Lane and Hunter Road. She walked two miles one way to school with other neighbor kids. Of course, that was very hard on the shoes, and Billie had to improvise by inserting a piece of cardboard into the sole of the shoe to cover the hole. It gave the shoe a few more miles. "School kids today," she said, "don't know what it's like to go without."

Stanley Rhoads, 82 Spokane

In 1930 at the age of 6, Stanley began attending Dry Creek School. His first teacher was Inez Fries. He remembered one occasion when she disciplined him by making him sit under her desk for a time to contemplate his poor behavior. On another occasion, he had to sit in a chair facing the corner of the room.

Perhaps he was deserving, perhaps not. Only Rhoads knows. However, he did admit that he was guilty of playing pranks on others. During one lunch hour, he kept egging on young Donald Sanderson to climb as high into a school yard tree as he possibly could. Just when he reached the highest limb, Mrs. Fries rang her hand bell. Everyone went inside to class including Rhoads, who was full of smiles as he left the poor Sanderson boy stranded high in the tree.

Noon breaks allowed for eating and playing games. Rhoads remembered playing Fox and Geese, a type of chase and tag game while others played Hop Scotch.

At the end of the day, Mrs. Fries helped the children get onto their horses to ride home.

Wanda Sanderson, 82 Island City

At one time, all six Sanderson children attended one-room schools. Today, only two of the six survive to tell about it, and Mrs. Wanda (Sanderson) Pointer is one of them.

"I attended Dry Creek School with about 24 other school kids, and during my first four years (1930-34), I was taught by Inez (Woodell) Fries," Wanda said.

June (Hug) Wagoner taught her fifth grade (1934-35), and Naomi (Twidwell) Perry taught her sixth through eighth grade classes (1935-1940), she said.

At this time the school term lasted 36 weeks, typically beginning the day after Labor Day and ending in May. The school bell rang at 9 a.m. and classes adjourned at 4 p.m. Each morning, Sanderson walked 2 1/2 miles to school.

"The first one there had to start the fire (in the stove). There was a little hole in the outside wall at the rear of the school house, and if you stuck your hand in there, you could get the key to open the front door," she said.

When Sanderson and her siblings didn't walk to school, they rode their horses. However, after a very heavy snowfall, her father, Willie, and her Uncle Charlie drove the kids to school on a sled pulled by two horses, sometimes riding right over hard drifts that covered pasture fences.

Curtis Roper, 82 La Grande

Curtis attended the fifth through eighth grades (1936-39) at Pleasant Grove School with 12 other students. He rode his horse three miles to school and tied it up in the school's horse stable. During lunch hour, kids went out to feed and water their horses, he said.

Pleasant Grove School was the only country schoolhouse with two instruction rooms. When enrollment was large, both rooms were used. Grades 1-4 met in one room, and grades 5-8 in the other. However, during the years when Roper attended, the smaller of the two rooms was used only for storage.

Shannon McDaniel, 76 Kennewick, Wash.

Shannon attended fourth and fifth-grade classes at Summerville School from 1939-41. His fourth-grade teacher was Ethyl Hanson, who, in 1941, left her Summerville School teaching post to accept a job as school superintendent, McDaniel recalled. His fifth-grade teacher was Lena Herman.

The Summerville schoolhouse was located inside the city limits near Fourth Street. It was a square building divided into two rooms. Only one room was used for instruction and the other was used for storage. There was no plumbing, he said, but the girls and boys had separate outhouses nearby.

Clifton "Duck" Slack, 93 Perry

"I attended Dry Creek School for first grade in 1919 and finished fifth grade there before I moved to Summerville where I attended sixth and seventh grades. After that I went to Elgin for eighth grade," said Slack.

Slack, who has been a horseman all of his life, broke many horses in his day, but he could never break his Dry Creek School teacher, Bonita Teter.

"One day, I wanted to leave school at 4 p.m., but I hadn't finished my studies. In order to stop me from leaving, Mrs. Teter locked the front door and stood it front of it. She told me to sit down and finish my studies. She kept me at school until 8 that night."

Slack admitted that, on a later occasion, she did expel him and Zach Pugh from school. "I was sort of an ornery kid, but I kept coming back to school, and she didn't stop me," he said.

Lewis O'Mohundro, 79 La Grande

Before the consolidation of schools in 1939, "I attended Willow Creek School for fourth (1937-38) and fifth grades (1938-39). From there I attended Imbler where I graduated from high school with five others in 1944. I was salutatorian of my class," said Lewis O'Mohundro.

He and his older brother, Edmund, allowed themselves an hour to ride their horse, Silver, the seven mile distance from their home east of the Grande Ronde river to Willow Creek school. "We had to travel on what some people considered the muddiest, messiest road in the area," he said.

Mrs. Charles (Doris) Rhoads Elgin

Doris Rhoads is one of the original six people who, in 1996, initiated the organization of an annual student reunion that would encompass all of the area one-room schools. Though she attended schools in Milton-Freewater, she honors her late husband, Charles Rhoads, formerly of Summerville, and the other one-room school students by continuing to support their annual reunions.