Teresa Abrams, who retired after 30 years teaching sixth, seventh and eighth grades, told those at the reunion her husband, David, made the birthday wish and she immediately began drawing up plans. It started as a wish for a class reunion but she turned it into a centennial reunion for all those who graduated from the high school or attended it as an elementary.
“He went to school with 25 people. Why not just do a school reunion? I drafted a three-year plan and proposal,” Teresa Abrams said, adding that she was looking to the 2016 centennial of the building. “It was quite a vision.”
She said her husband’s vision included a community center, bike trail, park and a host of other things he hoped to see to enhance the community. A committee of community residents was formed to look at what they could do to make that happen.
When the building was torn down, however, those plans were altered and David Abrams now hopes to see a park grow on the site of the old school building.
Toward that end, they have already hosted a car show and quarter raffle and are offering various mementos of the school for sale including a Barker ornament, T-shirts, a memory book and memorial brick pavers.
The pavers, in two sizes for $50 and $75, will be placed at the site of the former school building to begin the creation of a park.
Orders for those items were being taken at the Centennial Celebration billed as “Pay it Forward!”
In his introduction for the evening, emcee Al Dunkelberger said they were not going to allow the community to lose its identity.
“Even though the school is not there anymore and Somerville is part of Milford Twp., someone asked what we will call it now. It’s still Somerville, the ‘Ville,” he said.
Among guests for the evening were former employees at the school, including William Bryan the last principal in the building before it closed, who came from Sarasota, Fla. to attend, but he was not the person who came the farthest. Bob Christophel was given one of the Somerville School ornaments in recognition of coming from San Antonio, Texas.
Also given an ornament was Bill Simpkins, who was the earliest graduate of the school, from the mid-1940s.
Speaker for the evening was Fred Lindley, who became principal of Somerville School while teaching sixth grade at age 24.
He said that provided the experience and the impetus for the rest of his school administration career.
“This is family. What you have here is community spirit. The building holds us together, the fabric, so to speak,” Lindley said, before leading listeners on a mental tour of the building with a description of walking into it and describing where specific rooms were located and recalling moments from his time there.
He reminded listeners that it was the first high school in Butler County with a gymnasium, although he said the ceiling was so low, players were taught to bank basketball shots off it. He also recalled taking part in gym nights in Oxford for area schools organized by Al Tanner.
The auditorium, he recalled, was a “great facility” which hosted many school and community events. He said he has been told it once hosted a performance by the group The Crickets and hoped someone could confirm that, at which point, someone in the back of the room said it was The Turtles.
Lindley recalled students starting a library in a small, unused room. He also said they started a journalism club, Somerville Olympics, safety patrol and a science fair as well as other events in his time as teacher and principal at Somerville School. He got that latter job at a young age because the principal had left and he had just received his administrators’ license.
He praised the help he received from other staff members and school secretary Freda Circle with his inexperience.
“I was really, really enjoying myself as a teacher and principal. I didn’t know the answers. I didn’t even know the questions. I learned about shared decision making,” he said praising the efforts of the former school secretary. “She helped me get started as a teacher and she helped me get started as a principal.”
Lindley has been active for several years with his native Darrtown, although now living in Centerville, as part of the Bicentennial and now annual reunion.
He told the Somerville group he has a Darrtown website that includes pages for the schools in Milford Twp. and hopes to expand his collection of pictures from Somerville School, inviting them to submit any they have. That can be done through the site, Darrtown.com, he said. He brought a collection of Somerville photos to the centennial celebration asking those present to look at them and supply names for people they can identify.
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