- Well, welcome to another program of the Monroe County History Club. My name is Michael Carter. Welcome
- to my beautiful wife, Paulette, and my cousins, and my brother Steve over there who came to watch. I
- need all the help I could get. We had our VHS class of 64 reunion here, a mini reunion we called it.
- It was Friday night. It was our 64th, something like that. And I see some of those people in that group
- here tonight.
- great all support I get for the BHS class of 64. I left some sheets of paper on the tables, the ones
- listing all the upcoming programs for the history club going all the way into next year. Keep in mind
- these programs aren't set in stone, cancellations could happen, and they have happened a few months
- ago. We just find a way to work around it. Many thanks to the American Legion for allowing us to have
- these programs. We've been partners in presenting. Yeah.
- There's no other venue that would even come close to this for doing what we do. It's been around 12
- years, over 12 years. Thanks so much to the wait staff and the kitchen staff who do a great job every
- time. Brooke and Amanda are doing great. Please be generous. I'd also, of course, like to thank Catch
- TV for recording our programs for now almost 10 years. And we have our own
- recorder, cameraman, Dave Walter, who's been doing this for several years. And he's good. Yay, Dave.
- It's a very important service. It allows us to upload each program to YouTube for people who can't make
- it for generations to enjoy, hopefully. Also, our local history enthusiasts who attend these programs
- are great. We so appreciate your support, believe me.
- And then those who watch the programs on YouTube, because everybody can't get in here. And some people
- work for a living. So I keep numbers on how many people watch it. You might be surprised how many people
- all over the country transplanted Bloomingtonians watch these things. Do we have any new attendees today?
- I bet we do. Well, anyone who wants to get on our regular mailing list, somebody who doesn't like social
- media that much or whatever, we email out invitations
- every month so if you want to do that you can leave me your email address and my buddy George Carpenter
- gets that job done. So right now, Daniel Schlegel, the director of the History Center would like to
- say a few words.
- Thank you, Michael. I just had a couple things I wanted to go through real quick for anyone that is
- unaware. We have a big garage sale every year in June. We have a second one in November and we are still
- collecting items. So if you are downsizing or find some stuff you don't
- maybe need anymore. We are collecting through October 22nd at the garage sale site. So I brought some
- of those quarter sheet flyers over where I keep all the books. So feel free and come over and see me
- over there. We have three new exhibits up in our spaces at the history center. So make sure you come
- out and see them. One is about lantern slides. It's brand new, just opened last week, I believe or so ish.
- So it's not a very old exhibit. We also have historic neighborhoods up through the end of the year.
- And then we also have Violetta, an immigration story, and it opens tomorrow. So you can be some of the
- first people to come out and see it if you wanted to learn about that. And then the opening is on Saturday,
- so the opening reception. So there'll be free food and there'll be, you can see the exhibit. So a good
- deal there. We also have our dearly departed coming up.
- In mid-October, we partner with the city and we do tours of Rose Hill Cemetery. So if that's something
- you are interested in or know someone that might be interested, we have some flyers over here. Our new
- educator, Luke. Luke, if you just wanna wave your hand real quick. Luke Anderson's gonna be doing a
- lot of outreach and education for us, so please make sure to stop by, say hi to him, or come to our
- events where you can meet Luke and see the great stuff he's doing. And then,
- Oops, I almost forgot. We also have Picture Perfect, a new exhibit that's opened, and it's about the
- 75-76 IU basketball perfect season. So make sure to pop over and see all about that. And then the very
- last thing I had was Resilience. Their next play is coming up this Thursday through Sunday. There are
- still tickets for sale, so feel free to come over and ask me. I'm happy to sell you some.
- or we're always happy to see you come visit the History Center. So stop by and see us. Otherwise, I
- have a lot of books. For anyone that doesn't know, IU's doing really well in football. So we have some
- books about IU over there and the Cinderella Ball when they went to the Rose Bowl last. So feel free
- to come over and see us. Thank you. All right, Daniel. Yeah, we're booked, well, about a year ahead
- here. So I don't know. That's a lot.
- We'll see what happens with all those. He mentioned the picture perfect about the IU basketball team.
- Actually, next month, October, we're going to do a program about that by Rod Spa. I'm going to show
- a lot of photos from that year. And we've got stuff like the history of McCullough School down the road,
- and just a lot of good stuff. But today, our main speaker is Larry DeMoss, Ellisville guy.
- He was born and raised in Hamilton County but came down to Monroe County events and went to IU. The
- big thing was he was a finalist in the first Jeopardy Teachers Tournament, 2011. Not bad. You're just
- showing off, that's right. Now today he's going to talk about Quarry Lads and Eagles to Mustangs. Just
- a look at schools in both Bean Blossom and Richland Townships.
- prior to consolidation, followed by an account of the events leading up to consolidation, and then a
- look at the community and the corporation in the last 60 years. So Larry?
- To start with, I'd like to ask with a show of hands how many of you had a multi-day or a week-long senior
- trip when you were in high school? Okay, I was expecting a few more hands than that. Now, the class
- of 1972 at Hamilton Heights High School went to Pittsburgh, Gettysburg, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C.
- There were 42 of us, which is about half of my graduating class. And we each, I think, had to pay $42
- to do it. Plus, I'm spending money. Those of you who did have a senior class trip, how many of you ended
- up having that trip recorded in a magazine with national circulation
- by a well-known, well-established author. No? All right. It happened. The New Yorker. Lillian Ross was
- a well-established writer.
- contributed a number of things to the New Yorker. And she also had written an account of Ernest Hemingway's
- life that Papa didn't particularly care for it, apparently. But she came to be known as one of the founders
- of what came to be known as the new journalism. Some of you have probably heard of Truman Capote and
- Cold Blood, Tom Wolfe, the right stuff. Those are
- Those are examples of the new journalism. It used literary techniques in order to tell a story, to report
- on news. Give me a chance to get my technology together here. Well, at Steinsville High School in 1960,
- The English teacher at Steinsville, and as far as I know she was the only English teacher at Steinsville,
- contacted Lillian Ross and told her about an upcoming trip by the class of 60 and wondered if she thought
- it would be good for a magazine. And the result was the yellow bus. Now this is the
- class of 60 in the quarry in the 1960 yearbook and the people that are named there, that is actually
- a quote lifted from the article, those were the students that attended on this particular field trip.
- Lillian Ross made arrangements to interview a number of the people who went on the trip and she put
- together the article that appeared in the August 8th, 1960 edition of The New Yorker, now. So besides
- the 18, there were 24 graduates, 18 of them were able to go on the trip, the other six for either for
- financial reasons or whatever decided that they
- couldn't go, but the 18 who went, along with their English teacher and her husband, Polly and Thomas
- Watts, a bus driver, Ralph Walz, and his wife, Margaret. Now, the bus driver is the only one of the
- group that had ever been to New York City before. His contribution was he drove them the 39 and a half
- hours, 849 miles from Steinsville to New York
- They took the class treasury of $957.41, along with each of them had spending money of about $50. And
- he offered that they should stay at the Hotel Woodstock on West 43rd Street near Times Square and where
- to eat, Hector's Cafeteria around the corner from the hotel. And then he said he was going to bed.
- They stayed in New York for two full days and three nights. And they decided, among other things, they
- decided they would take tours. The first night they took a subway out to Coney Island. The next day
- they decided to take a tour on a bus and they took a vote.
- and decided that they would wait until the next day to go to the Empire State Building. But they took
- the tour, and among other things, they went to Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty. Polly Watts
- said that Steinsville was the, quote, most democratic school she had ever been, saying, they vote on
- everything. We have an average of two votes on something or other every day. So they voted about what
- they wanted to do.
- And after the first night's trip to Coney Island, they voted to take a tour of New York, and they ended
- up going to, a tour of New York, and they ended up going to the Statue of Liberty, and there's a quote
- that is from the class president, Jay Bowman. He was determined that he was going to do it. Mrs. Watts,
- by the way, said that it was too much for her because of claustrophobia. I think he was exaggerating
- when he said there were 40,000 people in front of him.
- Jay Bowman was the class president. He was just a natural leader. And he took care of all the voting.
- And Lillian Ross, later on, she interviewed a number of the travelers. And she put together her article
- from those interviews. She reported dialogue about how the
- students found their experience in New York. Some of them, they found New Yorkers to be rude. They found
- them to be always in a hurry. Even things like going to a restaurant felt alien, and not to mention
- expensive. Albert Wharton, and unfortunately, Mr. Wharton was killed in action in Vietnam about eight
- years after this trip.
- But he is quoted at the end of his first meal, his first New York meal. He said, my mom cooks better
- than this. His companion, another classmate, Larry Williams, told Miss Ross, man, you can keep this
- New York. This place is too hustly. Everybody's pushing, no privacy. Man, I'll take the big boy back
- home any time.
- And I suspect most of us are old enough to remember the precious big boy. After the article was published,
- it drew mixed reviews from the people on the trip. Some people felt that it portrayed them as being
- a bit unsophisticated and naive. Others found it was very well-balanced and accurate.
- But it was unquestionably unique. For my talk today, I want to talk to you a little bit about the historical
- background on the, of the two townships that comprise the Richland Bean Blossom Community School Corporation.
- Beginning with the Bean Blossom Township and some of the subjects, which is the home of the subjects
- of the yellow bus.
- most of you probably know, Monroe County is divided into 11 townships. And in the upper left in blue
- here, we've got Bean Blossom Township, which extends from, this is the White River near Gosport. And
- this line, those of you who are familiar with 46 going from Ellisville towards Spencer, that line right
- there is just about Flatwoods Road.
- Some of you may have noticed Rick's small engine or the solar panels, the solar farm that sits off to
- the left of 46 as you go into Spencer. That's close to the, that's real close to the Township line.
- And then Richland Township, whoops, is south and goes down this point, this corner right here is almost
- exactly two miles west of where we are sitting right now.
- So just a little bit of Bloomington falls into Richland Township, but mainly when you talk about Richland
- Township, you're talking about Steinsville, or Ellisville, and if you're talking about Bean Blossom
- Township, you're talking about Steinsville. Now, educational development in Bean Blossom Township
- from the beginning up to the 1960s. We'll work on that for a little while and then we'll go to Richland
- Township. But first we've got to do just a little bit of history review. Most of us in Indiana history
- class learned about the Northwest Ordnance. It included a provision that divided all the counties into
- townships and each township consisted
- almost all townships consisted of 16 sections. And one of those sections was set aside to support public
- education. When Indiana celebrated statehood a few years later, 1816, Indiana effectively had one school
- district for every township. After the General Assembly acted in 1821,
- they thought it would be a good idea to divide all the townships into four school districts. So effectively,
- in 1822, Indiana had over 3,600 school districts. Supposedly, that meant they were all supported by
- the proceeds from that one section. But there was no taxation support. And so they relied on tuition,
- which was often
- outreach for most pioneer families. The way that it developed in in Richland Township or in Bean Blossom
- Township, we had a series of a collection of at least 19 one-room schools throughout the early 1800s
- well into the 1900s and you you can see the names there. The picture in the middle is actually
- the Steinsville one-room school
- The names of the schools are familiar to people who live in the area, either from family names, but
- many of them are still around, or they're preserved in road names. Woodland, Texas Ridge, those are
- roads that you can visit today. But those are some of the 19 schools that I was able to find during
- the 19th century.
- Now, the next slide is going to show you the stone building that lasted well into the 20th century,
- and this was Fairview School. Now, Fairview School was proud to be the 1924 one-room basketball champion
- in 1924. So, legislation granted townships power to collect property taxes to support the schools. However,
- it required a referendum.
- and progress was slow. When the referendum was held in 1849 to establish tax-supported schools in Bean
- Blossom Township, the voters voted against it, 112 to 59. The result was common throughout the state,
- especially in rural areas. The only township in Monroe County that voted in favor of the tax-supported
- schools was actually Perry Township.
- That continued for a while and then down the road in Corden the legislature was doing their work and
- they finally decided that it was time to figure out a way to support schools more directly and so they
- came up with a funding formula and Steinsville's first school was not built until 1905 but
- the idea of a tax-supported school started to sound a little more attractive to the people of Steinsville
- because things were changing. Limestone, of course, took off as the major industry, and the railroad
- came through. And so the first Steinsville public school was built at a cost of just over $7,000. Maybe
- they should have been a bit more superstitious because it was
- dedicated on January Friday the 13th in 1935 or I'm sorry in 1905. So remember that 1905 but Friday
- the 13th. The top top picture here is the first Steinsville public school the high school and the one
- on the bottom is after an addition from 1928.
- And now we will meet a couple of or a few of the first graduates. And there they are sitting on some
- of the product from the quarries. These are graduates from 1908 through 1910. And since it is Indiana,
- basketball was included in the very nature of Steinsville High School, even though they their home games
- had to be played outside or
- they played at neighboring schools because they didn't have a gymnasium. But that's a young Mr. Van
- Buskirk holding the basketball in his right hand in the back row there. The idea of the Quarry Lads
- was fairly straightforward. Lime Shrunk Quarries were so important to
- the economy of Steinsville and much of northwestern Monroe County. The idea of the Quarry Lads was offered
- by a teacher named Lovell Childers. And it was selected after a contest to decide what they should call
- their basketball team. And not surprisingly, the yearbook was called the Quarian.
- Now, they weren't all Quarry lads though. This is the 1928 girls basketball team. The Quarry lads never
- could quite get over the hump to win a sectional championship, but they did still have some notable
- moments. In the tournament, Frank
- Chris Moore, the 1927 Steinsville team, was assigned to guard a player at Martinsville in the first
- game of the Martinsville sectional in 1927. Martinsville ended up winning that game 30 to 6, and the
- man that he was told to guard was John Wooden. And Martinsville appeared in three consecutive state
- championship games. They won it all in 1927.
- Chris Moore also talked about playing games outside. And when the weather didn't cooperate, they would
- move their practices inside a vacant building on Main Street in Steinsville, where he said, quote, the
- ceiling was about four feet above the rims. Now, Steinsville did have some notable success. In 1931,
- they actually won the Monroe County Basketball Championship
- defeating Bloomington in the championship game. I couldn't find a picture of that team, but I do have
- a picture of the team two years later, the 32-33 Cori Lads. They still had a pretty good year.
- They ended up, they started out 1-7.
- Not real good, but they ended up 9-11-1, so that was a good end to the year. The tie was a three-overtime
- game at Gosport, which was just down the road. So as Hoosiers, you can imagine how loud it must have
- been in the Gosport gym for that, after three overtimes. The girls fared a little bit better. They had
- a much larger team, a veteran team.
- I'm not sure what the significance of the different colored shirts are, but apparently the coach is
- in the middle of the back row. She is Miss McDaniel. And they had a very good record. They ended up
- seven, two, and one. They split their two games with Unionville and their two games with Salisbury.
- They beat everybody else except Quincy, and Quincy ended up
- in a two to two tie. Not sure who scored the two points. Now, the next man I'm going to introduce you
- to must have had some interesting talents. He is identified in the 1933 Corian as Stimulator.
- I taught English for 32 years at Edgewood High School. There are a number of times, especially when
- I was teaching grammar, that I would have liked to have been able to call on a stimulator. After fire
- destroyed the school in 1935, remember what I said about it being dedicated on Friday the 13th, it was
- destroyed in 1935 and a new building was erected from using New Deal funds
- It was opened in 1937 and then it was dedicated in 1938 when the gymnasium was completed and presumably
- not on a Friday the 13th. And that is the new, in 1937, the new Steinsville High School and the Quarry
- Lads had their home. With their home court, the Quarry Lads continued to compete against tough schedules
- against usually much larger schools
- As I said, they were declared county champions in 1931, Beep Bloomington. In 1954, they had three players
- who were offered athletic scholarships, Jim Wilbur being one of them, and he was invited as one of the
- 100 nominated to the Indiana All-Star team. And on the last Steinsville team in 1964, Mike Peterson
- was their leading scorer, and he set a school
- career scoring record with 1111 points. He scored over 25 points a game and scored over 30 10 times.
- And now I need to move a few miles to the south and I want you to meet an influential pioneer settler
- in Richland Township and his name is James Otto Parks.
- This, I apologize for the graphics. You might be able to make out, but this is actually from an interview
- that was republished 50 years later in the Ellisville Journal. And Mr. Parks was born in 1781 in North
- Carolina. When he was 30 years old, he traveled with his family and moved to Indiana.
- he ended up having a varied career. He was a state representative, a county councilman, and for a while
- he was Monroe County Superintendent of Schools. The abstract of my house reveals that it was original,
- the land that it sits on was originally deeded to James Otto Parks in 1817, shortly before
- Monroe County became a county and not long after Indiana became a state. And I live adjacent to the
- Edgewood campus. And so it's likely that the current Edgewood schools sit on that tract of land that
- he got from the federal government. Throughout the 1800s and well into the 20th century, each county
- in Indiana had a single school superintendent.
- Superintendents for individual school districts gradually displaced that over the years and I don't
- know if there are any counties that still have single county superintendents other than the counties
- that have a just a one school system such as Bowen County or Brown County. Parks' contributions were
- varied and he had a long and colorful life as it shows you. He was known as Uncle Jimmy, a
- a teacher at Ellisville High School actually interviewed him when he was 97 years old, so in the 1870s,
- or 1880s rather, and then 50 years later the journal republished it. But he ended up dying at 101 and
- a half years old. So yeah, but quite a guy. And in 1991,
- I had a young man in my English class whose name was Jimmy Parks. And he was James Otto Parks's great,
- great, great, great grandson. Now, like Bean Blossom Township, Richland Township had a number of one-room
- schools, not quite as many as Bean Blossom did. But they lasted, again, throughout the 19th and into
- the 20th century.
- This is the Crossroads School from 1936-37. And you can see the example of some of the other one-room
- schools that existed in Richland Township. The next slide shows a picture of a one-room school.
- This is the, it's alternate, excuse me, alternatively known as either the Kirby or the Mason School,
- but it is described as, quote, this photo is an excellent representation of a one-room classroom. And
- in the front row, we have the recitation seats, and you might be able to make out the flat top coal-fired
- stove back in the back corner. Now, as with Bean Blossom and other rural townships,
- Richland voters originally rejected the tax-supported school referendum in 1848, but a new constitution
- and the work of one Caleb Mills finally helped move Indiana forward. Caleb Mills was a professor at
- Wabash College, and he made it his mission to get public education going in Indiana.
- Indiana's public education program lagged behind a lot of states at that time. And so the Constitution
- was passed in 1851 after the bankruptcy caused by the canal collapse. And then in 1852, there was a
- public funding bill that included taxation for public schools. And so Mills was able to help bring his
- dream to fruition.
- With the new taxation power, the Richland Township built their first publicly funded school and opened
- it in 1855 and that's it on the upper picture. It had two rooms and it was used for about 20 years.
- It was located on what is now Association Street, just off, runs parallel to Temperance in Oldsville.
- Below it are, to the left, Little Brick and to the right is Big Brick. Big Brick opened in 1872. It
- had five teachers and it included both primary and secondary schools, or students. And then the Little
- Brick was opened later in the 1870s and it was for primary students when the enrollment outgrew the
- capacity of Big Brick. There's a better picture of Big Brick.
- And this was located on Temperance Street. But by the 1920s, the time had come to replace the big brick.
- And so a new building was constructed on the west, way out on the west end of town. And that is today
- Ellitsville. Well, it was Ellitsville School, Ellitsville High School, and today it is Seven Oaks.
- And it had a gymnasium that was the home for the Golden Eagles. Now, the Golden Eagles, they did win
- four basketball championships, 1947. And I met somebody earlier today who graduated from Ellsville in 1947.
- They also won in 1950 and 1952, and their final championship in 1961. This is the 1947 team. Those 47
- Eagles were runners-up at the Wabash Valley Tourney, which used to be a huge tourney had over 32 teams.
- It's still going, but it's got 16 teams now, but it used to be a huge midseason tournament.
- They ended up as the runners up that year. And they avenged a regular season loss to university school
- on their way to the sectional title. And they won their first regional game, beating Corey by one point,
- and then losing by a single point to Terry O'Garfield in the regional championship. But you can see
- there, this is the last two and a half months or so from the Wabash Valley Tournament on to the end
- of the season.
- during the sectional they had to beat Eminence University Bloomington and then Martinsville. Their last
- sectional championship was 1961. They were coached by a guy named John Holmes who you can see in the
- back there and a junior named Vern Pfaff was their leading scorer. Now that's
- Mr. Pfaff on the right, he went on to play at Indiana University next to a couple guys named Van Arsdale
- and some guy named Steve Redenbaugh. Some of you know who I'm talking about. Steve Redenbaugh was actually
- my seventh grade PE teacher and my ninth grade PE teacher at Hamilton Heights. And then he left Hamilton
- Heights and came to Edgewood and was the head basketball coach at Edgewood for a while.
- The guy on the left is John Holmes. John led Altsville to the sectional championship, went on to coach
- at Cascade and Avon and a couple of other places before returning to Edgewood as athletic director until
- his retirement in the early 90s. He retired and was named to the Monroe County Athletic Hall of Fame
- in 2015 and then died earlier this year.
- I very much appreciated Mr. Holmes' help when I first started teaching. Music was important in Ellisville
- before consolidation, and this is the marching eagles at the 1960 Sweet Owen Festival in Spencer. But
- things were changing that would have an impact on both
- the Eagles, and the Quarry Lads. Indiana's General Assembly passed the School Reorganization Act of
- 1959 and set in motion a wave of school consolidations across the state for the next several years.
- Now, school consolidation was nothing new in Indiana or most surrounding states.
- Formed larger schools reflected changes in educational philosophy, demographics, technology, transportation.
- But at the end of the Civil War, Indiana public school students went to school for an average of 68 days.
- By 1900, that was up to 149 days. And in 1897, Indiana made education compulsory for all children ages
- eight through 14. There was a 1907 law that encouraged consolidation, but it didn't have a mechanism
- to require it. And so many schools, many one-room schools stayed in operation through much of the 20th century.
- It took 50 years really for everything to fall into place. In James Madison's, the Indiana Way, between
- 1890 and 1920, over 4,000 one-room schools closed in the state of Indiana, but there were still a lot
- of them left. Each county was required to put together
- a report on the situation of schools in their county and so Monroe did what they were supposed to do
- and they created a report that was called a comprehensive plan for the reorganization of
- school corporations in Monroe County, Indiana, submitted to the State Commission for the Reorganization
- of School Corporations in Indiana May 1961. The report called for the creation of a single countywide
- school system. There were hearings that followed the report. There were a lot of people that did not
- think a single countywide school system was a good idea.
- set off flurry of activity among some of the leading citizens in Northwestern Monroe County, that being
- Bean Blossom and Richland Townships. Two of them were the trustees of the two townships, Mr. Miles and
- Mr. Brown. And along with others, there were various thoughts. Some of them just wished to preserve
- the unique identity of the community.
- Others just didn't want to be a part of the rest of Monroe County or anything to do with Bloomington.
- And some of the prominent citizens that supported, this is by no means a comprehensive list, but some
- people like Lindsay Hayes, Joe Regal, Quentin Elliott, and the publisher of the journal, Mr.
- Morris Endright. Some of you remember Mr. Endright. He was a delightful man later to be known as Mr.
- Ellisville.
- The trustees took the first steps by forming a school board. And in addition to the two trustees, they
- selected a graduate, a 38-year-old graduate of Steinsville High School who was at this point a resident
- of Ellisville. His name was Winfield Dick Jacobs.
- Some of you may be familiar with him through his activity as a referee, sports official. He's a member
- of the Indiana and Monroe County Hall of Fame as a referee. And anyway, he joined the other two and
- they became the board for the Richland Bean Blossom Metropolitan School Unit. And they got to work.
- One of the first things they did was they filed suit. They signed a resolution and they sued to stop
- the one unit school system from taking effect. There was a referendum held and it was overwhelmingly
- rejected by the voters in Monroe County. A second proposal came around. It suggested a
- a school district that would include just Perry and Bloomington townships, and another school system
- that would include all the other townships in Monroe County. That didn't exactly sit well with what
- the RBB folks had in mind, so they just kept working. And the new board took office on July 1st of 1964.
- The journal, as I mentioned before, it was a very active, it was very active in support of having a
- separate school system for Richland Bean Blossom. I will not say that it was unbiased journalism. Mr.
- Enright had a very clear idea of what he wanted. He was a prolific writer.
- They continued the debates and the suits, the work at the state level continued for a while. But the
- trustees decided to go ahead and let contracts for a new high school for $130,000. I have the current
- superintendent and another board member from original Bean Blossom in the room with me.
- I think it would be accurate to say we could not build a classroom for $130,000 today. But there it
- is. As it works out, the 1964 would be the last graduating class for Steinsville and Ellsville High
- Schools. But it wasn't quite a done deal at this point.
- Now the Monroe County History Center recently had an exhibit that featured high school cords, corduroys.
- And the next picture I want to show you, here is the final graduating class of Ellisville High School,
- some of them wearing their cords. Here's the last graduating class at their baccalaureate at First Baptist
- Church in Ellisville.
- And here is the last graduating class, 1964, in Steinsville. The politics, the courts, everything kept
- moving. Construction of the school was going on. Legislation was going on. RBB, the trustee for
- Richland Township was a Mr. Miles and he was acted as the liaison for the school trustees or the school
- board with the Commission in Indianapolis that was talking about what they were going to do and he had
- assurances that the one the the ones unit plan was not going to fly but then when the vote was held
- it was six and six to one in favor of that one unit plan
- There was a second lawsuit filed. There was another referendum was held. And so they just kept going.
- And in effect, the referendum ended up getting soundly defeated, especially in the RBB area. And so
- the preemptive efforts of the Richland Bean Blossom Board
- became effectively the final decision. The building was under construction at the beginning of the 64-65
- school year. All high school students from Richland and Bean Blossom Township were attending the Ellisville
- building until January 25, 1965, when they got to enter for the first time the new Edgewood School.
- Is that right, Mr. Durnall?
- We have at least one member of the class of 1965 here today. And so they had to come up with a name
- for the new school and Edgewood was selected as the name. And I am thrilled that
- the person who won the contest, named the school, is actually here today. Would you please raise your
- hand and wave to everybody sharing? And actually, there were two suggestions for Edgewood, but she won
- because she gave a better explanation of why it should be Edgewood. Well, it was on the edge of Ellisville,
- and it was out near Flatwood. Edgewood. Made perfect sense.
- I'd also point out this little sidebar here. They needed another $180 to pay their legal fees for the
- suit. Can you imagine? It cost $1,000 to hire a lawyer. And so the Quarry lads in their red and white
- and the Golden Eagles in their black and gold became the Mustangs.
- in black and white with red and gold trim. Again, they had a contest to decide what the name should
- be. The fact that it happened in the 64-65 school year and the fact that Ford had just released a Mustang,
- I am sure is completely coincidental. The first class at
- Edgewood first graduating class from Edgewood included a number of members who would contribute a lot
- to the community for many years. I've gotten a chance to meet and talk to a few of them. Dan Rary has
- been a prominent realtor in the area for some time. Jerry Cravens would serve on the RBB school board
- for a number of years and continues to this day as a member of the holding corporation for the building.
- And in attendance with us today is
- Mr. Jimmy Durnall, who after a career, after serving in the Navy, had a distinguished career with the
- Indiana State Police and now serves as the Chief of Police in Ellisville. And for the last 25 years,
- he's been on the original Bean Blossom School Board. So thank you, Mr. Durnall. Edgewood was able to
- add something that neither of the predecessor schools had.
- Football. Now, some of you may have had this experience, but if you're starting a new football program,
- it takes a little while. They took their lumps for several years. In 1974, however, they set a record
- in the state that stood for some time. They won nine games, and every game they won was a shutout. However,
- they did lose one. And that was the first year for the state
- football playoffs, and they only took four teams, so Edgewood was not invited. However, there were,
- there have been, here is the 1974 team, by the way. If you can see any of the names there, some of them
- may be familiar, if you're familiar with the Edgewood community. There are Bennett's and Graby's and
- Schatz and Butcher's, and there's a lot of familiar names in there.
- Later on, we've had some record setters, running backs Rod Ogan, Richie Leffler, Robert Boltinghouse,
- quarterback Josh Collier. And there have also been some, there's been some success among some of the
- girls. This is the 1990 regional championship girls team. One of the things I discovered in doing my
- research is that both the girls basketball and volleyball teams
- have notched 10 sectional championships and two regional championships. This team from 1990, I started
- teaching in 88, 89. This was a great group. In the front row there is their coach, Bill Atkinson. And
- right behind him is some guy named John Chance that some of you may know. The boys have to wait a couple
- of years for their first championship. 1993.
- Coached by Jeff Birch, they won the Bedford sectional. This is during the years of single class basketball.
- To win the sectional championship, they had to be in order, Bloomington North, Bloomington South, and
- Bedford North Lawrence. They had lost all three of those schools during the regular season. So they
- had to turn those results around. And then they went on to defeat seventh ranked Terre Haute North in
- the first game of the Terre Haute regional.
- only to be defeated by the ultimate Cinderella team, White River Valley, in the championship game. There
- are a few other sports that have had some success. There's a whole host of Mustang runners that have
- gone to the state finals and placed. Among them includes this guy, Charlie Worthen,
- with his mother at graduation. He went on to become Hall of Fame cross country coach at Bloomington
- North, but he was a Mustang first. Rusty Dutton and Damian Chambers won state championships in wrestling.
- Stacey Martin and her brother Corey both won state championships in throwing. Stacey was also named
- mental attitude award winner.
- Then there's coach Bob Jones, who has over 500 victories in baseball. And this picture is the guy who
- threw a complete game in a loss in the state championship game in 2019. Luke Hayden is now in Florida
- in the Reds organization. Yeah, he started out at IU. That's right.
- besides his 500 wins and that one loss. He's got a counterpart in softball named Mick Hammett who has
- had similar success. Mick has won 13 sectional titles and he went to the state championship game in
- 2012 with his pitcher Rachel Delay who was also a mental attitude winner.
- Both teams ended up losing in the championship game to Andrean High School. We're not bitter about that.
- And then there's the 2006-07 boys basketball team. Coached by Jay Brown, they went undefeated in the
- regular season through the sectional. They were ranked number one in 3A. They faced a tough schedule
- ahead, just full of ranked teams.
- And the junior center on that team would make the Indiana All-Star team the following year. Some of
- you may recognize the all-time record point holder for Monroe County, Garrett Butcher. The only person
- from Monroe County, as far as I know, to play in back-to-back NCAA championship games. I have had the honor of
- announcing every point that he scored on the Edgewood home court during his four-year career. He's just
- a great guy. In addition, Edgewood has had academic success, including the first Lilly Scholarship winner
- in 1998. She went on to become the North Carolina Teacher of the Year a few years later.
- A trio of Wells scholars, including a guy who last year was named the pro bono attorney of the year
- in Indiana. A couple of state championship teams in Academic Super Bowl. But we really can't talk about
- Edgewood High School without mentioning music. Vernice Laker, there in the middle of the front row,
- started Music Warehouse in 1976 and they've been a perennial favorite ever since. This is 10 years later
- at the Beach Grove Invitational where they were champions. They've won all kinds of trophies and they
- continue under the direction of Brian Paulson. There's nothing official yet, but they will be having
- a 50 year celebration next spring, so stay tuned for details about when that happens.
- And there's another group, a music group at Edgewood, the Marching Mustangs. Yeah, near and dear to
- my heart, I am happy to tell people that the first time that the Marching Mustangs made the ISMA state
- finals, the very first note was played by my son. It was a timpani roll. And so he hit the timpani.
- But they made it in 2000.
- And they've made it 18 more times since then, the last 18 in a row. They won the championship in 2018.
- And then they've won it the last three years, 22, 23, and 24. This photo is from last November's performance
- at Lucas Oil Stadium. And if you get a chance to see their show this year, Transance, they're on track
- to win another one. But I know there is a question on everybody's mind right now.
- everybody was thrilled when the article was published in 1960. The yellow bus unquestionably marks it
- serves as a historical marker for Steinsville High School and for Bean Blossom Township. This is the
- 50-year reunion for the class of 1960. The trip had been a
- The senior trip had been a tradition at Steinsville for a number of years and other Indiana schools.
- But only the Steinsville Class of 60 was so prominently showcased. For the 50-year reunion in 2010,
- Jay Bowman, class president, he reached out to the author, Lillian Ross, and invited her to attend.
- She was 92 at the time and just didn't quite feel up to it. But she did send a nice note.
- in her decline, but she lived for another seven years, died in 2017 at the age of 99. Bowman himself
- continued to demonstrate his leadership skills. He had a long and award-winning career with the National
- Security Agency. I had the
- opportunity to talk to him on the phone. He's a wonderful person to talk to. I learned that his older
- brother, Shaq, was the superintendent of Monroe County Schools from 90 to 94. His younger brother was
- a basketball star, graduated a year after Jay. But I'd already mentioned Albert Worthen, who was killed
- in action in Vietnam in 1968.
- there was an Ina Huff in that class on that trip. Well, she got married and became Mrs. Summit and taught
- at Ellisville schools for about 20 years. And I got to meet her and work with her for quite some time.
- Like every graduating cohort,
- The class has a number of other stories that they could tell, but together they do form a fascinating
- chapter in the story of the schools in Richland Bean Blossom community. They give us some of the history
- of Sinesville, and I'm very happy to have been able to share this with you. I want to thank people who
- helped me put this together, Steve Brewer, Jimmy Durnall,
- Leah Figley helped me get into the Ellisville History Center. Megan McDonald and the Monroe County History
- Center were very helpful. The RBBCSC office, especially Dr. Sanders and Susan Shockney. Jay Bowman,
- as I got to talk to him on the phone. Pam Cook, thank you. Susan, my wife, thank you. Sharon Roulet.
- And the Monroe County
- retired teachers for their wonderful book Echoes from One Room Schools was a tremendous resource and
- I'm very grateful to that. So I will try to answer questions but also as I told a couple of you, tell
- me what mistakes I made because I know I made some. Thank you.
- The future of the year in North Carolina was Beck Strain and the, uh, uh, Beck Strain. And the pro bono
- attorney is Mike Gaskin. Who? Gaskino. And he was, he wasn't an attorney before. I don't know if he's
- still working with them. Anybody else? Oh, there's somebody.
- I was told that Winfield Jacobs went around with a saw cutter to get people to volunteer to grab the
- space to cover the football field. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, the Jacobs brothers definitely were
- part of this. I've heard that as well.
- I want to thank you for highlighting the arts at that school system in addition to sports because the
- arts have affected a whole lot of kids that have come through that area of our county and I'm eternally
- grateful as a parent of three Edgewood grads. I'm very grateful.