School: O.K. School Reunion, Grant Parish Louisiana Source: The Alexandria Town Talk, Sunday, September 29, 1985 Submitted to USGENWEB by Gaytha Thompson 540 May Drive Madison Tn 37115 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** O.K. SCHOOL REUNION - 1985 Former Students, Teachers Fan Memories Of a Long-Gone Two-Room Schoolhouse by Angela Wendell, Town Talk Staff Writer Colfax- The Brass hand bell clanged after 38 years of silence Saturday for former pupils of the O.K. School during a reunion at Colfax Civic Center. O.K. wasn't a fancy public school nor was it a privileged private one, it was merely a two-room white building off old Highway 19. "Nobody knows how it got its name," Alma Whitstine, said. "But there's a story about how someone said, "Let's build a school," and somebody else said, "OK." Scant records in the parish courthouse reveal the school was operating in 1896 and closed at end of the school term in 1947. Beulah School, a parochial school, was the forerunner for the public elementary facility in the little section of Grant Parish, Willie Mae Futrell, alumnae, said. The first O.K. building was across from Floy Futrell Davidson's house. She attended the school beginning in 1906 and went through to the sixth grade. She then transferred to the high school in Colfax as did the other students. Mrs. Davidson said the school was dived up into the two rooms. "The little room was for first through third grade," Dorothy Lee Futrell Q'Quinn said, "and the big room was for fourth through sixth." She said the words "big" and "little" indicated the size of the pupils not the rooms. Miss Futrell explained students were grouped in rows according to their class. "There might be six students in a grade, usually no more than that," she said. The teacher would teach class by class and row by row. Instead of being distracting, Miss Futrell said, "It was quite an effective method for the time. If you were a sharp fourth grader and finished your work you could listen to the fifth or sixth grade lessons. It was listen and learn." Spread out on long tables around the civic center were pictures of students and teachers before the school. Many of the children went barefooted to school during the warmer months, and most of the boys wore overalls all year, Miss Futrell said. Older men, some clad in overalls, some in slacks and white shirts, scrutinized the pictures and jabbed each other with weathered elbows, laughing as they recognized themselves from an earlier day. Blackened pyramids of baked sweet potatoes were set next to a bowl of pale teacakes. Miss Futrell said the potatoes and teacakes were a staple for school kids as were cold biscuits with ham. A battered red lunch bucket with a Dutch design on top that belonged to James Ray Fitzhugh sat at the end of the table. Ragged primers inscribed with names of fourth graders were also on display for the former students and their families. The Halton Curry fourth Grade Reader cost a whole 38 cents when it was used at the school. Yellowed report cards and spelling certificates were among some of the artifacts. Mrs. Davidson said her parents never paid much attention to the grade reports. "They just signed it and sent it back," she said. Perusing the pictures, former students would quiz each other on the whereabouts of other students. This one had died last year. That one lives in Pasadena, Texas. That teacher is in the nursing home at Colfax. Earl "Dike" Futrell walked up to his former teacher Jessie Richardson McMae and visited with er awhile before she could call him by name. "It takes me a while to call my students by name, but I never forget their faces," Mrs. McMae said during a speech. Edna Smith Jones and Essie Chandler, both former teachers, were also recognized during the program. All the teachers were presented with corsages of violets, honeysuckle and dogwood blossoms. Mrs. Whitstine said that particular assortment was chosen because "those were the flowers most country kids picked for their teachers on the way to school." Teachers and students alike gave short speeches about their memories of the old school. Guy Maxwell reminisced about "the mudsliding place" by the school and about Cortez Grant, the only girl in school with patent leather shoes. "We thought she was Cinderella," he said, still maintaining some awe 40 years later. "She would drive up in that black shiny Model-A car, I think it was, and walk in and make straight A's. Some of us were lucky if we caught a ride on a timber truck to get to school," he said. Maxwell related how he had been sent a "store-bought valentine" one year and kept it for many years more. Mrs. Whitstine talked of playing "deer and dog" (a group game of chase) during recess. "We had been running a long time and by the time we got to the school there wasn't a soul there, of course most of us were out running. We were all scared to death but Miss Smith didn't hit us." Instead their teacher made them do chores such as washing the lights or cleaning the black board Mrs. Whitstine said. A band composed of former students of the school except for "a piano player we had to import from Montgomery" performed gospel and country music during much of the morning. They played back-up for Maxwell and Mrs. Whitstine as they sang a tribute to their elementary alma mater. Georgia Preuett and Monroe Maxwell were awarded replicas of lunch pails for being respectively the oldest and the youngest former students in attendance. Afterwards, the school bell was rung with gusto by "Dike" Futrell as a signal to begin lunch. Tables were spread with fried chicken, biscuits, teacakes and baked sweet potatoes and folks served themselves as they would at any family reunion. While everyone else heaped platesful of food, Miss Futrell said the O.K. School was given to the community for a meeting center and was then passed to Bethel Church to use before it was finally torn down. The bell, a few books, and memories of the roughly 345 students who attended O.K. are about all that remain of the little two-room schoolhouse.