Embedded Files
Am I not here, I who am your mother?
I have three other historical websites, just click on these links:
https://sites.google.com/view/gettysburgcollege1972/home
"I reflected on the ambiguous importance of the past in our lives. In order to free ourselves from it we treat it as a decaying memory. At the same time, it's the only measure of identity we have. There is no mystery to the self, we are what we do and where we have been. So we have to resurrect the past constantly, erect monuments to it, and keep it alive in order to remember who we are."
I was not the first one in our family to go to Osborn School. This is my father's first grade report card from the 1926-27 school year, the school had been built just two years earlier. He entered first grade in September 1926.
Note the gold stars.
Belle Osborn Memorial Scholarship
Belle Farr Osborn was born in Ashland, Ohio on July 24, 1854 and died March 19, 1923 in Austin, Texas. She was the daughter of Judge and Mrs. William Osborn. She was educated in the Ashland Schools and attended the College of Wooster, Wittenberg, and Vassar. For 22 years, she was an educator. She began teaching at Walnut Street School (Arthur Street School), later being chosen principal of the high school, and eventually being named interim superintendent. Osborn School was named in her honor. She was a member of the Presbyterian Church. She asked that upon her death, a scholarship be established to help a worthy student acquire a musical education.
Click here for 2013-16 BabyBoomerBlog webpage
Please contact me at jeffrey.ewing1@gmail.com with any comments and material you wish to add to the site or with requests to remove (or properly credit) a borrowed image. Spelling corrections are also welcome.
Osborn aerial view shortly before the 2015 demolition.
The PTA would hold a school festival each year in the gym, selecting a theme which each student in the school would illustrate in a publicity poster. This is one my brother did when he was in 3rd grade.
This is my first grade class from the 1956-57 school year. Only about half stayed on to graduate from Ashland High School in the Class of 1968. Some moved away, some graduated a year or two later, and at least one was soon phased into the system's special education programs. Little of this was apparent at the time to a bunch of unsophisticated first graders.
Noah Laughlin (front row right corner) was the one destined for special education, we were only six years old but we worried for him. He died last week. To the best of my knowledge the only four deaths from this group so far (2016) are the three guys on that end of each row and Garnet Braden who is next to the guy in the top row, strange things sometimes occur in group photos.
Noah Henry Laughlin Jr., 66, died Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at his residence. He was born March 24, 1950 in Crestline, the son of Noah Henry and Nellie McCrea Laughlin Sr. He was preceded in death by his parents and a stepbrother, Henry Wilson. There will be no services.
Marti Bennett and I are the only two in the top row who did not graduate in Ashland's class of 1968. Only three in the second row did not graduate with the class of 1968. Yet only two students in Noah's row graduated with the class in 1968. Since the rows were roughly arranged by height that could mean that height in first grade is positively correlated with future academic success - or maybe not.
Above is the other 1st grade class that year at Osborn, taught by Mrs. Hartman. Each year the kids in these two classes would be reshuffled so that by 6th grade each of us have spent at least a couple years with everyone in the class. Like Mrs. Waller's class only about half stayed in the Ashland system and graduated in 1968. At the time you thought Ashland was a very stable place but that was only because the change was so gradual.
Here is my cousin Becky Semler's first grade photo from Grant Street School - not much different.
6th grade for this group would have been the 1961-62 school year.
Sue did not label Helen and Kip but they are sitting beside Al Zehner in the front row.
Per Brian Linke: "the two boys next to Bobbie Picking are Jack Crane & Carter Redding I believe."
Contributions to the site are welcome.
Sue Martin was able to supply these teacher and student names (many more than I could) in these two group photos.
Based on memory and report cards my teachers were: 1st Mary Waller - Room 211, 2nd - Hazel Linn - Room 210, 3rd - Nedra Sackett - Room 322, 4th - Carrie Kohler - Room #329, 5th - Louise McDaniel - Room #324, 6th - Ruth Thornburg - Room 320
Tracking along four years later, my brother had:
1st Mrs. Hartman - Room 215, 2nd - Maxine Allmendinger - Room 213, 3rd - Mrs. Hooker - Room #323, 4th - Norma McKinley, 5th - Louise McDaniel, 6th - Ruth Thornburg
Phillip Fair (at Osborn 1963-1970) followed up with this information on the teachers:
The teachers that were still at Osborn when I was there from the picture are McDaniel, Kohler, Almendinger, Dalton. I think Waller and Hartman retired after my kindergarten or first grade year. I see the mention of Mrs. Sackett and I had her for 1st and 2nd grade. The one tagged Yeager should be Miss Eggar, she was still there also. Miss Bowman who we called Bubbles was a history teacher at the Jr. High and Mcfarlin was an 8th grade math teacher. I remember that Steve had Almendinger and he hated her, and my mom was so relieved that I didn't get stuck with her.
When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.’
‘No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all cover'd with sheep.’
‘Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed.’
The little ones leapèd, and shoutèd, and laugh'd
And all the hills echoèd.
28 January 2016
Don Reinhart & Janet Klingensmith
I went to the Ashland University women's basketball game last night and they had a moment of silence for Don Reinhart, a professor who passed away this week at age 78. The name seemed familiar but it was not until I got home and read his obit that I realized that he and his wife had done their student teaching at Osborn when I was in second or third grade. I especially recall them pulling lots of lunch monitor duty.
They were a good-looking charismatic couple (they were not yet married) and all the third grade girls were crushing on Don and all the boys on Janet. I'm sure we had student teachers every year but they were the memorable role models. I think my mother knew them from several education classes she had taken at AC.
I found this on the internet and am sure that one of my teachers also read this book to our class much as described:
"Year's ago when I was a second grader, my teacher read to us everyday while we completed art projects. Dangerous Island was one of the first she read that fall, and we children begged her to read every day. You could easily hear a pin drop in that classroom while this story was read. Not long after completing the book, my family moved, taking me from my beloved school to a school in another state. It was a very difficult move for me and I would recreate the events out of this book as fantasy for myself. The book became ever more important to me as the months and then years went by. Eventually, the title of the book faded back into some long forgotten realm of my mind."
"It was a great book, about three kids who get stranded on an island, and it seems to me there was a lot of gold on that island." Trouble was, I had no idea as to the title of the book. None whatsoever. So, slowly but surely, I began doing research to find out the name of the book. It wasn't easy. Finally, I came across someone on the internet who had read a great many children's books. "From what you have written to me, it sounds as if your book could have been Dangerous Island. "Dangerous Island!" That was it. Now I had to go about getting one. After may searches on ebay I found one which must have been sold originally through the Weekly Reader Bookclub, because the paperwork was all in it. I got it for a decent price on ebay as this book has become somewhat collectable and goes for at least $50 through a conventional bookseller. I was pleased to find out that it was as suspenseful today to this adult as it was to us kids all those years ago. Like a book can do, it brought me back to a time in school when the pressure to excel hadn't yet set in, when the biggest decision of the day was "who will I play with at recess today?" In a way, this book is as much responsible for my adult love of reading as any I can think of. It is definitely a book of the era, and today's kids might scoff at it, but it brought me back to a simpler (and happier) period in my life, and for that I am grateful."
The flag pole used to be on the roof. The janitorial staff did not have to climb the ladder to the roof twice a day, they had a rope near the front entrance to raise and lower the flag.
At some point these cheap aluminum exit doors replaced the original steel and glass doors. By 2015 countless examples of a failure to maintain the high quality of the original materials could be found throughout the building. Anything that wore out was replaced with something significantly inferior. The only consolation about the building's demolition was that the school system had demonstrated that they did not deserve a building of this quality.
2 March 2013
Osborn School
The old girl herself, and without a doubt the building I would most like to see preserved. But last fall Ashland finally passed a school bond issue (the first since the early 60's) which will close the remaining neighborhood schools and consolidate them in one new building.
I would like to see it turned into senior apartments or maybe an off-site corporate training and conference center.
Here is link to a nice preservationist website about old Ohio schools:
http://www.oldohioschools.com/ashland_county.htm
Old public school buildings are extremely important to us as a culture. At the time they were constructed they were how a community expressed their "looking forward" optimism. And the quality reflected a real caring about the future.
I think that part of our problem in this country is this obsession with tearing down everything and putting something inferior in its place. When I visited Europe (after being stationed there 26 years earlier) there were many changes that had taken place but nothing significant was gone. If a society has a chronic compulsion to expunge its past and assign excellence to the wrecking ball, I think it sends a message of meaninglessness about one's day-to-day existence. And while existence might be meaningless, I think preserving the illusion makes for a more stable and well-adjusted society. I also think these things require mental energy to live with, whereas antiseptic environments neither inspire nor excite.
Osborn's first grade class in 1939. A bit before my time but the fashions and hairstyles did not change much over the next 20 years. I'm sure, however, that the first graders in a 1969 photo would look radically different.
To a little kid their grade school is typically the first nonresidential building they become familiar with, and if I was typical this establishes a life-long connection or bond stronger than any they will later develop with an inanimate object.
Osborn is really two buildings attached to each other. The original 1924 building and the 1949 addition, both on three levels. The contrast between old and new was of course much greater then than now; as a 25 year age difference doesn't seem that much almost 60 years later. My father had also attended this school, but in his day it was just the 1924 structure.
Although I thought little about it at the time the design was quite interesting. The old part consisted of eight regular classrooms (for the eight original grades), a couple small classrooms, offices, and boiler room. The addition added 11 more large classrooms, a gym, kitchen/cafeteria, and several smaller rooms. One classroom on the first floor was the kindergarten room. Each grade had two of the large classrooms, the remaining two were vocational rooms (home economics & shop) for the 7th and 8th grade classes. The first two grades were on the second floor and grades three to six were on the third floor. The 1949 addition was capped off with a bronze plaque of the Gettysburg Address just outside the gym.
I think they staggered recess and lunch periods to minimize opportunities for the older kids to pick on the younger ones.
Next door to the school was the Ohio National Guard Armory, with a parking lot full of military vehicles (mostly deuce and a half trucks) right next to our playground. There was no fence, just a small berm you had to climb to get up to the level of their parking lot. And since most of the activity there was during the summer or on weekends no one thought much about it.
We were not allowed to leave the playground area and were supervised out there during recess. But it was a large playground and those army trucks were a huge temptation for boys. One day when I was in kindergarten a first grader wondered over there unobserved, sat down, and began playing with some stones near an idling truck. The truck began to back up, its driver unable to see the sitting child who was so into his project that he had mentally zoned out. One of the older boys spotted what was happening, ran over, and pushed the first grader out of the way. But he was hit by the truck and then crushed by the rear wheels. Oddly I have not seen anything in town or on the internet to commemorate this; you would think they would have named a park or a new school after him.
His death traumatized the whole school and caused fences to go up and extra playground monitors to go on duty. I don't recall the names of either person and I was inside when it happened, but I think of it each time there is a school shooting and they offer counseling to the surviving students.
Shortly after posting this I asked Noel Watson if it had occurred, he confirmed that it happened but remembered the incident a little differently. Here is his account which I would tend to credit over mine because he was a year older and my account is not just filtered by time but was told to me the day after it occurred - I witnessed nothing. "It's been a long time, and I have talked to quite a few people about this situation, and the best that I can come with is the name Meryl Liston. This came from a girl who lived across the street from Osborn. I remember the accident as taking place in front of the Armory when the boy was riding a bike."
Mike Fulk who also lived across the street from Osborn remembers it taking place directly between the west entrance to the school and the armory building.
"Right down the road from the Hearst Castle, the Madonna Inn attracts visitors who are curious to see the kooky room decor and the famed “waterfall urinals” (yeah, you read that correctly) in the downstairs men’s room. The waterfall is activated when you step across a beam of light."
When I was at the Madonna Inn years ago after a nearby two-week Army Reserve / California National Guard summer camp I flashed back to the rest room in the older section of Osborn School. When we were students it functioned much like this but the wall was white porcelain. On both of them a wall of water cascades down at regular intervals. I found it a bit intimidating as a five-year-old in kindergarten. I've not seen this concept in any other place so I doubt if it was ever in widespread use.
Taken on June 2nd 2015, with the now vacant Ohio National Guard Building in the background.
First stop on my nostalgia tour was the first classroom on the right as you come up the stairs from the front entrance, then as now Room 211. This was my 1st grade classroom for the 1956-57 school year. Our teacher was Mrs. Waller, and it is the only class photo I have from that era. I think they had stopped taking them except for 1st grade. Mrs. Hartman who lived a few houses up from us on Edgehill was the other 1st grade teacher, she was my brother's teacher four years later.
It is now the music room, and 90% as it was when I left it for summer vacation 58 years ago. I don't think the trim was bright blue back then and the area over the blackboard had examples of printed numbers and letters running along it. Even the little speaker box (top center) is still in place and according to the teachers still operational.
Not 1950's Osborn but it could be, with the pledge of allegiance flag in the same type of wall mounted holder.
This is in the original 1920's portion of the school and it seemed ancient to me even back then. Because it is so unchanged, going into this room was the most intense moment of my tour.
According to the caption there were 33 pupils, which was probably too large a class size for one teacher but we did not know any better. Fortunately Mrs. Waller was one of those teachers who brought out the best cooperative behavior in her students without a lot of heavy handed structure, so I don't recall the class size that year as a huge negative. Connie Kauffman and I were the only ones from the new Luray subdivision, I believe that Sara Souder was in the other 1st grade class. Steve Overly would move up there the next year; and Barb Baird, Mike Brucato, Steve Denbow, and Harry Richmond would move into the area and become Osborn classmates soon after.
Many days I would go back to the Edgehill area after school and my mother would pick me up at someone's house, usually Peter Hamilton's on Diamond Street. Helen, Becky, Marti, Steve, Carla, Sue, and Ray would join those in our old kindergarten group who were in Mrs. Hartman's class for the walk home up Liberty and Edgehill (and finally over to Charlotte and Hale for some of the group). There was safety in numbers although Becky and Marti would have to walk the last block on their own.
If our teacher could not handle someone Mr. Carlson provided the intimidation factor, but in a wise manner much like those pictured on "Leave It To Beaver" - I still think of him when someone mentions that old spelling trick about his type of principal being a "Pal". He must have been a good role model because Carla Wright went on to become a School Principal in Georgia.
Cheryl supplied this photo of Osborn's 2nd grade Brownie group along with her best guesses as to everyone's identity. A year later Shirley Laughlin (distinctive for her dark curly hair in the first grade) moved to the west side of town and I ran into her at one of our baseball games at Heffner Field - the one that used to be between the town creek and Evergreen Street. The field behind Johnny's Food Basket was Brindle Field - I could have the names reversed and/or misspelled. I think Shirley completed elementary school at Edison, she is pictured in the 1968 guide.
I did not enter 1st grade totally uninitiated in the ways of public school classrooms, I had attended kindergarten at Osborn the year before. Kindergarten was in Room 106 and involved a lot of naps (or pretend naps as I don't believe I ever fell asleep) and playground time. I remember a large collection of bendable plastic jet fighter planes which I would gather up and take outside with me for recess. They had a sandbox or sand pile and I would arrange the planes each day in the sand, then gather them up when it was time to come inside. I had attended kindergarten with about half of those with me in Mrs. Waller's class. Hazel Lynn was both my Kindergarten and 2nd grade teacher, she was younger and took herself more seriously than Mrs. Waller, but I don't recall any serious problems.
Kindergarten was on the bottom floor, Room 106, on the other side of the hall from the cafeteria. Most likely the idea was to minimize stair climbing accidents.
I had Miss Lynn (I think her first name was Hazel) for both Kindergarten and second grade. Strangely I don't recall when she left Osborn or if she was still there in the early 1960's. Some of the older teachers were institutions at the school but the younger ones were more transitory.
Although that carpet looks dirty enough to date back to the 1955-56 school year, the floor back then was linoleum - and the old asbestos-backed tiles are still there under the carpet. We brought small rugs to school and would take naps on that floor although most likely there was very little danger because the tiles were relatively new and undamaged.
I suspect that the speaker and the clock are original. During its last years the room served as a computer room and then as the school library.
Room #322
The NE corner of my third grade (Mrs. Sackett's) classroom then and now, this photo comparison confirmed that we were on the 3rd floor and not the 2nd floor (there had been some doubt in my mind) which does not have this same corner blackboard configuration. That's Toby Strickling on the left and ???? on the right - I can't come up with the name of the partially hidden girl. The blackboards have been replaced with whiteboards but the framing is still there as are the floors. My awareness of the horizon line has improved over the past 56 years.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse