The chatter of memories being exchanged filled the 130-year-old Harmony schoolroom at Otoe County’s first country school reunion April 10 when someone rang a handbell that had been sitting on the teacher’s desk.
It made Janis Grimes’ head swivel and her hand reach out instinctively from the across the room.
She was one of a handful of one-room school teachers attending the reunion and took only a moment to accept that there was no unruly child to correct.
All of the students, who once numbered in the thousands, have been dismissed and all of the schools are closed.
Betty Stukenholtz, who organized the reunion with the Otoe County Geneology Society, said it was an opportunity to share stories and identify photographs.
She has been researching the county’s school history and has recently completed recording the names of students and teachers over a 22-year period from 1958 to 1986.
She is starting a new era beginning in 1931, but expects it to go slower because there were so many. Otoe County had 108 rural schools at its height and Stukenholtz said many had 30 or more kids.
One of them was Ruth Russell, who plans to celebrate her 95th birthday in October. She attended the Maple Grove school, which later became Arbor Trails Winery.
“I liked reading and arithmetic most. I didn’t care much for the spelling,” she said.
She was sent to the school by her father, James Schuster, and her first teacher was Margaret Black.
Her earliest memories involved the school entryway, where kids would put their coats and lunch boxes.
“The older kids helped the younger ones with their coats,” she said.
The boys would bring in wood for the stove, but she said they eventually got a coal stove.
Russell graduated rural school and went to work at Morton-House Kitchens before returning to the farm.
Teacher Carol Gobber said Otoe County’s last country school was District 11, the Smallfoot school north of Dunbar that closed in 2006.
She said the school had computers and a building that was built in 1981.
“We had a lot of activities and we could take field trips whenever we wanted. We went to the library in town twice a month and made many visits to Nebraska City businesses, banks and Arbor Lodge.
For former students, such as Wayne Harroun of Sunnyside district 12 and Keven Stukenholtz of Harmony district 53, memories include taking down the flag, recesses and lunches of hard-boiled eggs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Harroun was the only kid in his class all the way through school and Stukenholtz says he watches military flag ceremonies with a critical eye.
