Between the Rock and a new place
Building project stirs memories of historic school
For more than 70 years, it stood as a guardian, a welcoming sentinel to young, fresh minds eager to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.
Now, Liberty-Eylau Independent School District’s historic Rock School is clearing the way for construction of a new primary building.
One week ago today, demolition began on the well-known building. Those who attended and taught classes there said it was bittersweet to see the iconic rocks piled on the pavement.
“They didn’t tear down our memories,” said Jami Blain, who taught there this past year and cheered for the elementary students in the old cafeteria when she was in high school. “They tore down a building that they’re going to rebuild and honor the community with the new design. When we build it back, it will still be the Rock School because the front is going to be the rock.”
The plan is for stonemasons to clean the rocks and use them to create a similar facade at the entrance of the new school, which will be just north of where the old building stood.
The design also will affix the “Eylau 1938” cement plaque, which was atop the original rock facade, on the front of the new school.
The plaque bears the names of those on the school board when the school was built in 1938 as a Works Progress Administration project.
Karen Tipton, whose grandfather, H.L. Rachel, is listed among those board members, attended first through eighth grades at the Rock School.
She began her teaching career there in 1974, instructing kindergartners in what had been her fourth-grade classroom. Her children and grandchildren have also all gone to class in the landmark school.
Tipton told stories of taking the children out back to a small rock stage behind the school for plays and picnics, of the whole school watching movies in the auditorium and of the fireplace that used to warm the children as they studied. The building also had a basement, where she said they used to have haunted houses and the older children would scare the “little ones half to death” with tales of what lurked down there.
Tipton said while she loved the school dearly, and spent most of her life in that building, she knows the replacement will better serve the needs of the community.
“If we had had unlimited funds, it would have been awesome to have kept it. Realistically, that just wasn’t a possibility. You want your kids and grandkids to be up with everybody else, and that just couldn’t be there.”
The new building is part of a $20.9 million bond project thath voters passed in May 2016. Besides classrooms, it will contain a gym, music and computer rooms and a special education suite. Designed by Thacker Davis Architects of Longview, Texas, it will also incorporate a storm shelter, as mandated by state building codes. A new driveway will be constructed off U.S. Highway 59 to improve safety.
Amy Roberts, L-E’s director of curriculum, attended third through fifth grades at the school. She remembers a folding wall dividing the classrooms that would be moved to the side when they took square dancing classes.
“Things just change. You’ve got to understand that,” Roberts said. “I wonder sometimes, those people who are on Facebook and are upset, if they’ve even been in that building since they went to school there, if they understand it doesn’t look the same as it did then anyway.”
The Rock School was last remodeled in 2002, but it still had issues, including flooding in the basement, which required the use of pumps after each rain. Also after a rain, students in the back buildings had to walk through water to get to the cafeteria because the sidewalks would flood.
“We did fix it, and we got 15 good years out of it. I was in there this year and the floors creaked and there were just so many different things, and I wondered every day what we were breathing,” Blain said. She added that the gym roof had been repaired multiple times, but when it rained, trash cans would be placed throughout the building to catch drips from the ceiling.
“Every time it rained they’d have 15 trash cans and the kids would have to run around the trash cans. People don’t see that,” she said. “Our kids deserve to walk down the sidewalk and not have to walk on the little bricks on the side because it’s flooded. And they deserve to go to P.E. and not have to run around trash cans because the ceiling is leaking. They have worked very hard at fixing things and we band-aided it and band-aided it.
“The kids and the community deserve something to be proud of.”
Middle School Principal Jeff Wright, who also served as principal at the primary, said, “If that first-grade building had been torn down, nobody would have said a word. It’s the rocks that’s the iconic figure.”
Blain, Tipton, Roberts and Wright said the new building will better serve the children in the district and give them better opportunities to learn in today’s high-tech world.
“That’s what it’s all about, the kids,” Tipton said. “To us it’s a landmark, but to them, it’s an old building.”
Construction is expected to be complete by August 2018.