Senior News November, 2002 Vol. 21. No.  11

 

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Schoolhouse Odyssey: A photographer brings us remote ghost schools

Honoring Elders: 21st annual Northwest Inter-Tribal Gathering and Elders Dinner

Recycling or raw material? Creative uses of old magazines

Remembering Spirit: A Veteran works for change

National Hospice Month: A time to anticipate the last months of life

California Senior Legislature sets priorities

Christmas giving Certain gifts are less a gift than a chore to be done

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Schoolhouse Odyssey
A photographer brings us remote ghost schools
by Diana Schoenfeld

Capetown School memories flood Nila Morrison as she and four of her five generations of family members look at photographs from the Schoolhouse Odyssey exhibit. Next to her is Rebekah Thompson, Carol Covington and Sara Thompson who is holding Schoenfeld's photograph of the school. Photo by Diana Schoenfeld

In 1995, I began photographing small remote location schools, curious to know if one-room schoolhouse experience still existed and how it compared to the past. Before long, I began to discover real one-room schools which predated those I visited. Since then, this project has developed a life of its own with input from unexpected sources on schoolhouse history, "ghost schools," and memoirs of former teachers and students.

These old schools still exist, often camouflaged as churches, community centers and tobacco barns. Some have been transformed into residences, their original entrances tucked away and protected under new, expanded porticos. Several dating from the last half of the 19th century are still attended in California. While I enjoy them all, it is the non-operational, often abandoned ghost school that fascinates me the most.

These ghost schools exist in every condition imaginable, from spotless private museums to disorderly heaps of wood on the forest floor. Near Loleta, blackberry brambles have all but hidden the Eel River School. One I photographed has since burned down, and another, I hear, is finally being renovated. In Leggett, students posed for me on the site of their old ghost school. Overgrown in brush and all but invisible, the foundation is all that remains.

The earliest school teacher I have photographed is Nila Morrison of Eureka. She came to California driving teams of horses pulling a covered wagon carrying her mother and "the baby." A 1929 graduate of Humboldt State University, she began teaching at the old 1878 Capetown School (Brandstetter Ranch on the Lost Coast outside of Ferndale), earning $90 a month.

Former Canal School students came together for the first time in 50 years for a portrait at their old school near the Mad River west of Arcata. Later, Loleta Elementary third graders heard them describe what school days were like in early decades of the 20th century. Other portraits show Charlie Pedrazzini at the old Eel River school on Cannibal Island Road, built in 1887 on the dairy farm near Loleta where he was born and still lives. He began school there in 1916 at age six, recalling that the teacher always brought her buggy whip into class with her. The same Loleta third graders made a field trip to the old school for the purpose of creating a group portrait with Charlie.

Documenting these relic ghost schools has become my journey, and the people and stories continue to unfold and become part of the exhibition.

Selections from Diana Schoenfeld's "Schoolhouse Odyssey" will be on display at the Humboldt Senior Resource Center from Nov. 5 until Dec. 15. She is always interested in hearing about ghost schools across the country. If you know of one, please e-mail her at dianas@northcoast.com.