Alexander III Elementary classmates share memories

Long before Macon’s Baconsfield shopping center was home to a Kroger, a McDonald’s and a strip mall of stores, it was a park, a zoo and the playground for students at Alexander III Elementary School.

A schoolhouse that looked much like the front of the still-standing Alexander II Magnet School sat in a pie-shaped plot bordered by North Avenue and Gray Highway from its founding in 1910 until it closed in 1975.

Decades later, a group of alumni— many now in their 60s and 70s — gathered at Fresh Air Barbecue on Riverside Drive on Saturday to share memories.

Folks who got there early took to identifying people in old class photos.

Yellowed newspaper clippings and other photos were scattered on a table.

Miki Fluker brought her cheerleading uniform from 1964 and 1965 and hung it on display.

She started school at Alexander III in 1958, a year before her neighbor, Louise Watson graduated the seventh grade.

Gazing at the knee-length purple skirt’s hemline, Watson said her cheerleading skirt was longer.

“That would have been scandalous,” she said with a laugh.

Fluker said her mother bought the school’s marble founding stone when the school was closed.

Years later, it’s sitting in her backyard on Boulevard, not far from where the school once stood.

Munching on barbecue, 30 or so people gathered and told stories of tough teachers with high expectations, a Halloween prank that left chairs in a teacher’s tree and other fond stories.

“I think we’re close because we grew up together as children in grammar school,” Carolyn Talbot said. “When you’re children you form more of a bond. … It gets more important the older you get.”

Classmates Vic Armstrong and Suzy McCullough said the idea for the reunion — the second annual — was devised a few years ago when students from Macon’s Miller and Lanier high schools had a combined 50-year reunion.

“People started getting in grammar school clusters,” said McCullough, who also taught second grade at the school for four years before it combined with Henry A. Hunt Elementary in 1975. “We decided to get together.”

While other Alexander III alumni also have gathered in recent years, the group that got together Saturday is planning to return to Fresh Air Barbecue next year at 11:30 a.m. May 20, 2017 — the Saturday after Mother’s Day.

The date coincides with the annual reunion of children who lived at the Masonic Home on Nottingham Drive and attended Alexander III, Armstrong said.

Alumni from all class years are welcome, he said.

This story was originally published May 14, 2016 at 4:51 PM with the headline "Alexander III Elementary classmates share memories."