The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
TAKING A FIRST BITE
Fundraiser winners begin tearing down Harris Elementary
An excavator rocked on its tracks as its claw pounded big chunks out of Harris Elementary School in Amherst.
But the operator was neither a construction professional nor a vandal.
Rather, the winners of a First Bite fundraiser took turns pulling the levers and hoping not to push a wrong button Oct. 11 at the school at 393 S. Lake St.
“It was pretty intimidating,” said Kathleen Felgar, a 51-yearold nurse who lives in Amherst and works at MetroHealth Medical Center. “It was fun though. It jerks you around when you get a hold of the building. It’s pretty intimidating. It’s pretty powerful having that much machinery in your hands. Trying to get
“It jerks you around when you get a hold of the building. It’s pretty intimidating.” — Kathleen Felgar, a First Bite fundraiser winner
used to the controls is difficult. I’m a labor delivery nurse. That was really exciting today, too, lots of babies.”
Bob Brehm, Felgar’s “significant other,” is a general manager at McArthur and Sons Heating and Air Conditioning at 1658 Broadway Ave. in Lorain.
Brehm bought a raffle ticket at an Amherst football game and wrote Felgar’s name and information on it, he said, so she had the fun.
Russ Marty, 35, a teacher and student council advisor at Marion L. Steele High School in Amherst also operated the heavy equipment.
“Chuck Winiarski won the raffle, but he was out of town,” Marty said. “Since I do the school history, he was nice enough to gift it to me.
“I grew up in Amherst and attended this school in third and fourth grades in the early 1990s,” Marty said. “From a historical standpoint, it’s just a building. It’s a necessary step toward progress. From a historical standpoint, the fact that we’re maintaining the (Fred R.) Powers name is very important to me. My wife’s great grandfather was Mr. Powers. She’s a teacher, too, right across the hall from me. There’s no escape. Her name is Emily Marty; we’ve been married eight years. We were sweethearts during her senior year. We were in marching band together, so we knew each other from there.”
Marty arrived about 5:30 p.m. to receive a tutorial about what to push, he said.
“Ok, this lever does this; this lever does that,” Marty said. “I guess it doesn’t really matter if you don’t have to make something look pretty.
“I gotta tell you, this is
fun,” Marty said. “I love teaching kids, but this is fun, smashing things. It’s every little boy’s dream. At first I was pretty nervous I was going to push the wrong button. The guy driving walked away and let me do my thing. Once I got the first rip of the wall out, it was downhill from there.”
The excavator was operated by C.R. Morjock, 32, a foreman for Moderalli Excavating from Poland.
The building will be knocked down in less than a week, Morjock said, with another week or two to clean the area. Moderalli will be at the site for about six weeks, he said.
“We do a lot of schools,” Morjock said. “We’ve done a lot in Lorain. I think we did 10 schools in Lorain.”
Helping non-construction professionals operate the equipment was not as bad as he expected, Morjock said.
Tim Rini, project manager at ICON Construction
Services from Cleveland, said they did not find a time capsule at Harris.
“They told us to look by a tree at Shupe, but we didn’t hear of anything here,” Rini said.
The Harris Elementary site will be transformed into the new elementary school voters approved in November.
The Shupe Elementary School site will be seeded in grass, said Chuck Grimmett, building and grounds manager for Amherst Exempted Village Schools.
The district is saving 500 bricks from each school to build a memorial, Grimmett said.
About 200 people attended the Harris First Bite demolition, while 85 attended the First Bite at Shupe a week earlier, he said.
As the excavator ripped into the building and jerked out a section of wall, youngsters clapped and cheered, “Yeah! Good show!”