SCHOOL-TO-BE-BREWERY KEEPS SECRET

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 17, 1993                   TAG: 9301150076
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MITCHELLTOWN                                LENGTH: Medium
SCHOOL-TO-BE-BREWERY KEEPS SECRET
Bath County is famous for its mineral springs. Ted Reuter of Reuter Brewing Co. hopes to make its waters famous for another reason.
For now, Reuter is having a brewery in Pennsylvania brew his beer to his 18th-century family recipe. But starting this summer, he hopes to be making it himself, in the abandoned schoolhouse that once was Valley High School, located midway between Hot Springs and Warm Springs on U.S. 220.
At $75,000, "the place was a steal," Reuter says. The catch is it's costing him $300,000 more to turn the old school into a brewery. He hopes to have the equipment up and running this summer, at which point he'll need to hire three to five more people. "Everything is computerized today," he says, so he won't need more than that.
For now, there's little to show, except the gutted interior - and all the artifacts Reuter has uncovered beneath the floorboards.
"We found love notes that went back years ago," he says. "Some of the people still live around here. We found a pamphlet from World War II describing what to do in case of enemy bombing attacks. We found an old wooden javelin between the floor joists of the men's locker room. We found an old notebook with failing grades - and the guy still lives in town."
Reuter talks of opening a pub as part of his brewery and putting these finds on display.
But his major archaeological quest is to find the cave reputed to lie beneath the school. "When they built this place in 1918 they broke into a cave," Reuter says. "Kids used to sneak down in there to smoke or go swimming in a pond underground, so the school boarded it up or bricked it up or sealed it up." Lots of folks in Bath have heard about the cave, Reuter says, but everyone with any direct knowledge has died, so he's had trouble locating the entrance.
"We think it's either in the boiler room or the old men's locker room, but we can't tell."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB