Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 5, 1995 TAG: 9507050018
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Its textbooks were missing pages; its classrooms sometimes were cramped with upwards of 60 students; and its band, cheerleaders and basketball team had to wear secondhand uniforms.
"I guess we were the best at recycling. You took what you had and made the best of it," said Marylen Harmon, a 1966 Carver graduate.
There was no alternative. If you were black, lived in Roanoke County and wanted a high school diploma, Carver, which educated children in grades 1 to 12, was the only option for a free education.
Alumni aren't resentful that the past relegated them to school days at Carver. For nearly 20 years, in fact, they've fought to preserve their alma mater's legacy.
When the Carver Reunion Association started in 1976, its goals seemed simple enough. Members wanted to restore the school's name, which had been changed in 1967 to Salem Intermediate School. Their second goal was to preserve the school's history.
Shortly after the association organized, it accomplished the former, but the latter has proved to be a struggle spanning almost two decades.
But about a week ago, the long battle finally ended.
Sitting around a G.W. Carver Elementary School classroom table, six reunion association members watched as Salem Assistant Superintendent Michael Bryant spread out before them plans for a $6.1 million renovation of the school.
That day has been a long time coming for the school, which often has been in peril.
In 1982, Roanoke County said it needed to close an elementary school. At that time, Salem still was part of the county's school system, and Carver wound up on a short list of schools being considered for closing.
The reunion association was successful in staving off those attempts, but in 1990, the question of Carver's viability came up again.
This time, Salem, which formed its own school system in 1983, was looking at three options for the school: renovate, raze and rebuild, or build on another site.
It wasn't until last year that the decision was made: Carver's future was safe.
That was especially important to the Harmon family.
Chauncey Harmon, who was Carver's principal from 1953-66, and his wife, Lucy Harmon, studied at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama when the famous scientist George Washington Carver was teaching there. He was Chauncey Harmon's Sunday school teacher.
"It was my dad's dying wish not to change the name, and to keep it as a school and to make it second to none in the area," said his daughter Marylen Harmon. "Today, he'd truly be smiling."
Carver was built in 1939 on a 6-acre plot.
The school was a much-needed replacement for the Roanoke County Training School, said Douglas Dowe, Carver Reunion Association president.
"If you had experience at Roanoke Training, you certainly would appreciate Carver," said Dowe, who left the training school when it closed after Carver was built.
Laura Spurlock echoed that sentiment. She grew up attending the training school, but she graduated from Carver in 1941.
"I hate to say it, but it was like going from hell to heaven," said Spurlock, who later taught at Carver. "It was like leaving your home and going into a mansion."
Carver had running water, a library, a cafeteria, a gymnasium, and showers in the locker rooms - all of which the training school, which sat at South Broad Street and School Alley, lacked.
What Carver didn't have - books for all of its students and funds for classroom projectors, for example - students sold candy to pay for.
Sometimes, however, that still wasn't enough.
"I remember my dad buying books out of our personal family money so everyone could have a book," Marylen Harmon said.
But those material things tell only part of the story, Lucy Harmon said.
"Carver was a family," said Lucy Harmon, who also was a teacher at the school.
She taught other places, but no environment was as close-knit and nurturing as the one they created at Carver.
"Maybe it was because of segregation, but we never had the experience of going wherever you wanted to go. The school was the center of everything we did," Marylen Harmon said.
There were plays and musicals and recitals there that the whole community attended, Lucy Harmon said.
"There was a real bond and closeness there. ... Everybody knew everybody," she said.
And in those days, a teacher's duties didn't end in the classroom. Teachers spent their mornings as crossing guards and their evenings cooking meals for players on both sides at home football games.
"We looked after each other. Often, I would say to someone, 'Do you have anyplace to go?' And I'd wind up bringing three home and my brother would bring two. ... Sometimes we'd have eight and 10 people eating here," Marylen Harmon said.
But after Marylen Harmon's graduation in 1966, all of that changed.
Integration had begun, and it scattered Carver's 24 teachers and more than 400 students into schools throughout Roanoke County.
Once the school's name was changed, all that remained of the Carver that had thrived as a focal point of the black community was the building and the memories of its graduates.
And they will never forget.
by CNB