Landmarks anchor the landscapes of memory. For graduates of the Boxholm Consolidated and Grand Community Schools, a monumental landmark was erased when their two-story school was demolished last summer. It marked the end of an era.
The last class graduated in 1985. But for two more decades the school welcomed elementary students from Boxholm, Pilot Mound, and Fraser, and later, in 2004, as the school reorganized with Southeast Webster, students arrived from Dayton, Harcourt, Burnside, and Lehigh.
I didn't attend Grand Community, but my husband is a graduate, and both our daughters attended grade school there. I served on its schoolboard from 1996-2005, and as president from 1999 until 2003. We were happy with the quality of education, and its small class sizes.
Recalling the Glory Days
History shows that the Grant Township Consolidated School, as it was known in the beginning, had a proud heritage. Completed on September 1, 1917, the building was dedicated on May 24, 1918. The guest speaker at the dedication was none other than W. L. Harding, governor of Iowa. A special edition of The Boxholm News on April 23, 1918, boasted: "No where in Iowa is there a more handsome or substantial school building, taking cost into consideration, than the Boxholm Consolidated School."
Designed by an Omaha architect, it was built at a cost of $67,922.60. The Power Co. from Onawa was general contractor, Langford Co. of Boone was electrical contractor, and heating and plumbing was handled by Van Dyck Co. of Des Moines. The hallway floors and stairways were terrazzo with ceramic tile borders.
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The first school board, including Aikin Muench (remember his name!), was fiscally conservative. "No extravagant expenditure has been allowed," The Boxholm News proclaimed. "Every dollar can be accounted for in the financial statement, and taking present prices as a basis of computing worth, the people of Grant Township are receiving one dollar and fifty cents in value for each dollar expended."
The school had an enrollment of 269 students, K-12. The girls' team was known as the Bluestars. The boys' team, called the Swedes, emerged as consolation winner in the 1932 Iowa State Boys Basketball tournament. Those were the glory days, the days before demographic trends ravaged rural America. In 1955, a one-story addition including a gym, shop, cafeteria, offices, and classrooms opened its doors at a cost of $245,000.
In 1958, the school consolidated with long-time rival, Pilot Mound, and became Grand Community. The Fraser School followed in 1966. But by 1985, only 15 seniors crossed the stage to receive a diploma. In the fall, grades 7-12 were tuitioned out 10 miles down the road to Ogden in a one-way sharing agreement. Without Ogden's commitment to send any students to Boxholm, two reorganization votes failed-- the second one in 1995 defeated by 28 votes.
By 2000, Grand Community had forged a new two-way, whole-grade sharing agreement with the Southeast Webster School in Burnside. Reorganization followed in 2004. In its final years, Grand Community housed 5th and 6th grade students from seven communities.
During these years, our board worked hard to shore up the balance sheet, using our PPEL funds to replace the gym floor and repair the roof. But ag consolidation trends, combined with Iowa's 1989 open enrollment law, was pummeling small schools, and we knew it was only a matter of time before another reorganization push. Our goal was to maintain the one-story school addition so that it might one day become a stand-alone community center.
In 2005, I resigned from the board, and watched as a parent from the sidelines as the school doors were closed in 2014. By March 1, 2021, I knew its fate was sealed when a one-time cash levy to demolish an unused school building became available following the successful reorganization of Southeast Webster-Grand and Prairie Valley Community School in Gowrie. The new district, Southeast Valley became the second largest geographic district in Iowa served by a single high school, covering 500 square miles (499.2, to be exact) and including students from 13 towns.
A New Grand Beginning
In 1990, I wrote my first in a series of stories in Successful Farming featuring rural communities that had re-purposed their schools. The Schoolhouse Bed and Breakfast in Rocheport, Missouri--built in 1914-- was a harbinger of a new B & B trend. In Algona, the former homerooms of O. B. Laing Middle School became home to the O.B. Laing Apartments in 2016. In Grinnell, a 1921 school was converted into the upscale Hotel Grinnell. Buckeye's gym became its fire department.
In 2014, a new book, for all the small schools, a photographic pursuit of Iowa's forgotten schools, by Barb and Dave Else, featured 220 abandoned Iowa high schools. Grand Community School was pictured on page 29.
But almost eight years passed, and the Boxholm City Council had declined to take over the liability of the school from the school district. The schoolboard set an April 20, 2022, meeting to vote on demolition bids.
Mark Muench, who farms south of Boxholm, population 184, couldn't believe this was happening. Like many others, he thought someone else would step forward with a plan. Finally, Muench, the great-grandson of founding school board member Aikin Muench, called a meeting in his machine shed to save the one-story school addition.
He and another Grand classmate formed an 11-member Foundation board, the first step to a 501 (c)(3). They made calls, and created a Facebook page to invite supporters to a special city council meeting on April 19. A standing-room-only crowd listened as Muench, the new Foundation's president, told the council that seeing the deterioration of the school he attended had been like "a hole in his soul." Creating the Grand Heritage Community Center was "one positive thing I could do for my community," he said.
The City Council, and some residents were skeptical. They worried that the Foundation would lose interest and the building would become an eyesore. But the Foundation's attorney assured them that $150,000 would be placed in escrow. "If the building needs to be demolished in the future, the money is there,” he said. Razing the entire school also would have been less costly, so he had the additional $90,000 required to save the one-story addition. “This proposal has no financial risk to the city,” he reiterated.
The Council delayed its decision that night since a member was absent. Although the schoolboard was meeting to approve the demolition bids the following night, Superintendent Brian Johnson would have until noon Thursday, April 28, to approve a change order to tear down only the older part of the school, leaving the gym. The Council scheduled another meeting, agreeing to work with the Foundation, and the change order was approved. Muench, the Foundation and its five committees began work writing grants, planning fundraisers, and hiring professionals to renovate the heating and cooling.
New Meaning to Going "Old School"
Today, the 1917 school is gone, but the pain is relieved in part by the Grand Heritage Foundation's plans to give new life to the one-story addition and gym. Possibilities include open gym, adult league and youth basketball, volleyball, and wrestling tournaments, alumni and family reunions, school carnivals, craft shows, pickleball, and potentially a wedding/reception venue and a childcare center.
The City of Boxholm plans to build a playground on the site of the old school. Combined with the existing softball field, City Park, and shelter house, it offers the potential to create a "Grand" gathering place for Boxholm and surrounding communities. "In a sense, we already are achieving our goal of bringing the community together as we all work on this together," Muench says
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Success isn't a given--but it's off the starting blocks. What about the other 219 schools in the Elses' book? Not all schools were as well- maintained as the Grand Community School addition. Not all communities can come up with $240,000 to gain a chance to succeed. The Corwith-Wesley School closed in 2015, one year after Grand Community, becoming the 4,316th Iowa district to close since 1950. It was razed in 2016.
For years, Iowa has offered financial incentives for schools to merge, and, more recently, incentives to demolish unused schools after reorganization. Don't we need more financial incentives to re-purpose these schools? Some might qualify for historical preservation grants. Last year, Millersburg, Iowa received a DNR Derelict Building Grant for rural communities under 5,000 population to remove asbestos from its former school, as a first step to redevelopment. Cash matches are required, but re-purposing unused schools could help resolve shortages of housing and childcare facilities--both critical rural problems.
Looming beyond the question of renovating unused schools is the issue of the detrimental economic and emotional repercussions of school reorganizations on families and communities: the hour-long school bus routes, and athletic competitions 40-120 miles (one-way). Not to mention the transportation costs that drain away educational investments.
Paging through for all the small schools, you'll find the Pilot Mound School pictured on page 182. It was once the heartbeat of this small community. Today, it's better off than most--it's owned by a family that maintains it. In fact, they love it so much that their grandson and his bride had their wedding reception on the schoolyard last summer. Closed in 1985, the old school doors opened wide for this special occasion, allowing family, friends, and neighbors one more chance to tell stories, re-live memories, laugh together, and celebrate a place where older generations once gathered to cheer on the youth of their home community.
To read about the Grand Heritage Community Center's plans for the future, visit Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Grand-Heritage-Community-Center-103494762339136; Website - https://grandheritagecc.org/
More opportunities to get involved are coming early in 2023!
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That was an exceptional piece of work! Thank you!
Thanks for this informative piece about the loss of a building full of memories. You're bringing small town Iowa to life in your columns!