Hunt Co., TX - Our Town This Week, May 19, 1967
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                       From "Our Town This Week
                       By Mrs. Lois Lacy Lewis

A lot of memories went up in smoke last Friday evening when the old school
building at White Rock burned to the ground in a matter of a few minutes.
Nothing is left, but the tall old flues and carried the smoke from tons of
coal--and  the wood, too.  It is supposed that the building, large and two
floors and unused except for the community center meetings, club, and
homecoming meetings, caught from debris on the electric wires in the attic, for
the fire was discovered burning in the top.  Charles Stone, living near the
school and churches, reported the fire to Greenville and Celeste.  Both units
responded and the news reported that the departments prevented further damage
by putting out grass fires that threatened churches and homes.

    It has been learned that the school building was built a few years later
than 1907.  That was the year that the cyclone tore through the country and
demolished the Methodist Church.  By 1916, "Miss Annie" Holloway says the
addition of the long room in the back of the building was added for she began
her teaching there that year.  My remembrances dates from 1918.  The year that
the war closed and all bedlam broke out in White Rock School about 3:00 PM when
word of the Armistice came to us.  The school bell, rang on the framework
outside, was rung for hours; the year that it rained all winter and mud was
terrible; the year that the stove door in the fifth and sixth grade room was
off the hinges and had to be propped on; the year that the boys would rather go
to the back school yard and chop trees into firewood than to stay in class; the
year that many nice friendships were made that have lasted all these years.

    The fire make a vacant place in the community and in the heart of friends
of earlier years...and some of the smoke must have settled in our eyes.
(May 19, 1967, The Celeste Courier)