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.