Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 18, 1990 TAG: 9006180052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: SUGAR GROVE LENGTH: Medium
More than 900 people who attended the Sugar Grove School since it opened near the start of the century have already signed up for its reunion June 30. And the response rate is "picking up fast now," said W. Pat Jennings, a 1937 graduate and the reunion committee chairman. "We have them from Alaska and California and all over."
Organizers expect the number to go well above 1,000. Jennings has a $20 bet with another man that it won't go over 2,000 "and I'm hoping I'll lose."
In any case, it will probably be the biggest reunion of any kind ever held in the county. It is open to all those who ever attended the school, graduates or not.
An 1985 reunion of graduates was expanded to cover the years 1936 to 1941 because a single class would be too small for a full-blown reunion.
"I think I had 17 in my graduating class," said Jennings, a former county sheriff, congressman and House clerk. The graduates made him their master of ceremonies.
"And in my exuberance I got carried away and said, `Let's do this again in 1990,' " he said. "And then it expanded to . . . `Let's have everybody who ever went to school at Sugar Grove.' "
Jack King, a 1939 graduate living in Baltimore, has researched the background of the school and wrote a history to go into a directory that will be sold at the reunion. He traced the first Sugar Grove school back to 1902, when it opened in Joe Nelson's store building.
A new three-room school was built in 1903 less than a mile from the present school site, with another room added in 1910. That building was destroyed by fire in 1926. So was the second school, a one-story brick building with four classrooms built in 1927. It burned to the foundation on Christmas night 1935.
By then, it had more than 100 students, all without classrooms. They moved to a nearby decommissioned Civilian Conservation Corps camp to use a barracks building until a new building, the present one, was constructed.
The CCC camp boasted a large, empty water tower. Some of the boys would climb up the side and into the tank "to do things we shouldn't have been doing," Jennings said. Dr. D.B. Cox, a retired dentist who is a member of Wytheville Town Council, recalled that once he got up there, he wasn't sure he would ever get back down. "I'm still scared of heights," he said.
Robert Williams, the oldest Sugar Grove principal still living, recalls how he tried to catch some of the boys hiding in the tank. But when he stuck his head in the bottom, they scurried out, scattering so much residue behind them that he was temporarily blinded and did not see who they were as they ran to their classes.
Williams, who went on to become a Smyth County superintendent and state school board chairman, will be one of the guests of honor at the reunion. So will 93-year-old Vernon Slemp, who is one of the oldest graduates, and Sena Ward, 89, the oldest living teacher.
The present six-classroom building, with its office, library and auditorium-gymnasium, cost $25,000. Four more classrooms and a cafeteria were added in 1940, and still more facilities in 1959. It held its last high school graduation in 1969, becoming an elementary and junior high school after that.
King recalled a large number of elementary schools in remote areas of the county early in the century. "Until 1929," he wrote, "high school students from these areas had to walk or ride horseback to get to school. At that time, the county did furnish a Model T bus with a wooden bed. Students of that era remember having to push the bus many times on their way to school, as the roads were just dirt roads."
A number of Sugar Grove graduates have been busy with the reunion. Bill Pugh has arranged parking on the school grounds and a neighboring church, enough space for 800 cars, with a nearby farm field to handle the spillover.
"We've got the school property and the church property all laid out," he said, "and if that gets full, we're going to just send them to Robert Ward's field and they'll have to figure out how to park."
Elmer Phillippi has gathered about 25 tents for the various class groupings and other activities and, he said, seeing members of the group trying to get those tents up may be the funniest part of the whole affair. Seating will be limited, so it is suggested that people bring their own folding chairs.
A video of the reunion, with old school photos edited into it, also will be made and offered for sale.
Activities will start at 3 p.m. June 30 at the school grounds. The cost to attend is $6.50 per person, which covers the catered picnic-style meal. People can register by sending checks to The Sugar Grove School Reunion, care of Edna H. Aker, 417 North Main Street, Marion, Va. 24354.
by CNB