Howard alumni remember Depression-era learning

In the 1930s, in the height of the Great Depression, Claudia “Tossy” Alston and Bill Hollis rode to Howard School on a rickety, drafty bus.

They learned to read and write in a room that combined three grades. It was heated by a potbelly stove that burned coal and gave off a funny smell. But they will both tell you they had a first-class education.

“I wouldn’t take anything for having come here to this place,” Alston said as she and Hollis stood in that same room Sunday, with the same slate blackboard still on the wall.

The white brick building, located on Forsyth Road just west of Bass Road, was constructed in 1916 to consolidate three one-room school houses. It is now called the Howard Community Club.

On Sunday club members celebrated the 100th anniversary of the building by having an open house.

The school closed in 1938 and remained vacant for a few years until some community members decided to save it. They bought it from the board of education in 1945 and it has been the Howard Community Club ever since.

Club President Harry Davis said the building stays booked for a variety of events, including weddings and square dancing. He said it is the hub of the Howard community.

It has had some renovations and more are planned. Davis hopes to restore the school room that still has the blackboard to its original condition, complete with a pot bellied stove and desks from that period if he can find some.

Davis said the building’s structure is sound and he believes it could last for many more years.

“I think this place has got a guardian angel watching over it,” he said. “There were four of these buildings built in 1916 and this is the only building that’s left out of those four buildings. There’s something about this building, that it just wants to be preserved.”

Although the area around the building is well populated today, Alston and Hollis said in those days, students who went to Howard were considered country folk. Until 1920 students went there from first grade to high school. When Alston and Hollis went there it was only a grammar school.

Alston and Hollis said students didn’t give teachers any lip in those days.

“No one really thought of it,” Alston said. “That’s the truth.”

“They ran a tight ship,” Hollis added.

If students did get in any trouble - a typical infraction would be chewing gum - they would be made to sit in the cloak room in the back, which is still there. Alston thought she remembered Hollis getting sent there but he denied it.

“For what?” he asked her. “I don’t remember that.”

Alston said the school emphasized reading, writing and penmanship. She said they could read well after the first grade.

An artifact featured at the open house was the original type-written copy of the 1920 high school valedictorian address at the school. That was the last year the high school was there. The valedictorian was George Barfield Jr.

“As here have been kindled the fires of enthusiastic zeal for knowledge upon the altar of our hearts,” Barfield wrote, “so shall it be our pleasure and duty to perpetuate the glowing beauty and radiate the influence of such high ideals and noble principles to all places possible.”

This story was originally published September 18, 2016 at 6:16 PM with the headline "Howard alumni remember Depression-era learning."