Ghosts of Schools Past
Bug bites and a flashback to time spent in the principal's office...but no missing plaque.
Some readers may recognize that as the gymnasium at the former Inver Grove Elementary School, located on 66th Avenue and now a pair of charter schools sharing the space.
Warning: if you attended or taught at Inver Grove Elementary, you're about to have some flashbacks. We want to hear about them! Read to the bottom of the post for how you can contribute your memories and memorabilia to this project, beginning in August!
I had the good fortune to go inside the school thanks to the current principal of Discovery Charter, Dr. Heather Lines, after I had reached out for a different matter. (More on that in a second.) I'm grateful to Dr. Lines for opening Discovery's doors to a stranger and giving me a tour of the building, even though that wasn't what I was there for.
Here's what I was actually on the grounds to see:
I desperately wanted to find that plaque.
That clipping is from this article about the Inver Grove Elementary reunion, held in 1976 to coincide with the bicentennial. The event, held in September 1976, brought 800 people to the school and resulted in the planting of that golden locust (acacia) tree you see above. It also gave us this History of Inver Grove Elementary book, compiled by Margie Radka Christenson.
We've got the book. We've got the clippings. Heck, we've got the acacia tree:
So...was the plaque still there?
I reached out to Dr. Lines, explained the situation, and asked if I could have a few minutes of their time to just walk around the back of the property and check it out. She was more than gracious to let me through, and...
...nothing.
There was clearly more landscaping done between the tree and 66th Street -- several retaining walls with railroad ties marked what, in that 1976 picture, looks to be a grassy slope. Today, it's a thicket of scrub trees overgrowing what, in the 1970s, was a "school forest" of oak and walnut, planted by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources for natural history lessons. The acacia tree is still there, as you see in my picture above, but the plaque was either removed long ago or is buried under a lot more dirt than my gardening gloves could shift. (Kids, don't let 'em tell you history's not a glamorous job.)
As I trudged back up the concrete drainage system to the school, I'll admit the nostalgia started to creep in. I counted the windows, looked inside, and from the natural light flowing in above a classroom realized I was looking into what, when I attended Inver Grove Elementary from 1997-2000 (first to third grades), was Starr Wylie's second-grade classroom. (I have a memory of playing some sort of dinosaur computer game where I learned what a Corythosaurus was. That's not germane to this post, sorry.)
When I returned to Discovery Charter's built-on addition off the south end of the building, I thanked Dr. Lines for her time and explained that I was an alumnus and just really enjoyed the trip down memory lane.
Graciously, and with no prompting, she offered to give me a tour of the whole building.
Not wanting to be that guy, I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I should have. You can see the ones I took here.
But the bones are still there: the first grade wing, where Mrs. Watchorn's room looked out into the courtyard. The nurse's office, where those plastic-cushioned beds still sat. The brick-and-natural light principal's office, where Mr. Bernhardson--then my principal!--definitely called my parents once or twice.
I spilled all this, very embarrassingly, to Dr. Lines, who at least humored me throughout the process. We walked downstairs: the cafeteria/gymnasium, with the fold-down tables and the dish return in the far corner of the wall. The media center and attached computer lab (not pictured, sadly, because it's just desks and tables stacked to the ceiling). The fourth- and fifth-grade wing's team-teaching space, and Mrs. Grech's classroom, door still open:
On and on I babbled as we walked around. It was great. I was a kid again, remembering the second-grade production of Little Grunt and the Big Egg that we put on in the upstairs gymansium. I remembered Mr. Russell the gym teacher pulling the juggling scarves "through his head". I remembered the Raptor Center bringing birds of prey to school assemblies and our nickname, the Inver Grove Eagles. (Infinitely cooler, I thought, than "Pine Bend Bears", which I later became.)
I wonder what other things I've forgotten. Certainly not Mrs. Wells, the reading specialist, teaching us how to play dreidel at Hannukah, or Mrs. Watchorn's lessons on combinations of letters like "ch" (and the train noise to remember it, using the sounds it makes in chip, chrome, and champagne in that order. I'm fairly certain she didn't use "champagne" as her example).
But I'm sure there are things we've left behind. Just like that plaque. Maybe.
...or maybe it made its way to some former Inver Grove Elementary employee's house.
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What do YOU remember?
We're finally to the point in this project where we're excited to announce: We want to hear YOUR memories and see YOUR stuff!
To do that, we'll be holding what's called a "History Harvest" somewhere at the Simley/IGHMS complex (to be announced) from August 12-14, 9am-3pm.
You can see the full announcement here: https://invergrovehistory.org/isd-199-history-harvest
At this event, you can bring in old mementos, souvenirs, pictures, yearbooks (just not from Simley...we already have those), or other items related to the history of schools in Inver Grove Heights. And we have to be specific here: only Inver Grove Heights school-related things.
For full details, click that link (or this one), read the guidelines, and sign up to bring us your items! We'll scan or photograph them and give them right back to you. If you can't join us in-person, we've got a link for you to submit pictures and scans remotely, too.
If you're a former ISD 199--and especially Inver Grove or South Grove--teacher: feel free to get in touch with me at simleyhistory@gmail.com! We've going to do a smaller test-run of this History Harvest in the coming weeks, and if you want to bring by memories or record an oral history with me, I'd love to see you and hear those stories!
Cory Haala
July 25, 2024