Up for adoption

By CANDACE CHASE

Susan Miller hopes to find a new home for an old friend that sheltered her for a decade and rural students for more than 70 years.

The Daily Inter Lake

Susan Miller hopes to find a new home for an old friend that sheltered her for a decade and rural students for more than 70 years.

The Demersville School in Kalispell faces the wrecking ball unless Miller, the former owner, finds someone to move the building.

"That would be really sad," Miller said.

Developer Paul Wachholz bought the land that borders a planned light industrial park known as Old School Station. Wachholz said the development has no use for the nonconforming school that is now an apartment building.

He said Friday he would donate the building to the right people if they could move the historic structure within two to three months.

"So many people around here went to school there," he said.

Wachholz intends to use an image of the bell tower from the old school as the logo for Old School Station.

For Miller, finding someone to preserve this piece of the past as a museum or a house would lessen the pain of leaving.

"The only thing I can do is hope someone will find a new home for this lonely old lady and bring her back to her glory days," she said.

According to a former student's research, the building was constructed in 1910 on Demersville Road. An earlier school serving Demersville was built in 1884 off White Basin Road on what's now known as Hetland place.

Students attended classes at the little school until 1983, when it consolidated with Somers School. Miller said Pat and Sandy LaSalle bought the building from the school district in 1992 and converted it into a bed and breakfast.

In 1995, the LaSalles converted the building into a four-plex and sold it to Miller. A few years later, Miller was joined by business partner John Curry in the venture that expanded into a six-plex.

She and Curry decided to sell the building recently due to his health problems and other issues. Miller said she wasn't able to manage the building on her own.

"It's time to move on," she said with a sigh. "But it's such a beautiful place to live."

Miller's eyes mist over as she looks out the window of a former classroom which still sports the original chalkboard and drafty banks of windows.

She recalls taking walks with her dog in the fall and looking back at the bright red schoolhouse with its steeple jutting up against the golden trees and blue skies.

Miller still imagines the echoes of childish laughter in the schoolyard and the schoolmarms ringing the bell. According to some renters, ghostly visitors return occasionally for a reunion at the old rural school.

Miller recalled one spine-tingling experience. She awoke in the dark of night to find her dog standing on the end of the bed, barking into another room, with all the hackles standing up on her neck.

"I couldn't make myself go in," she said with a laugh.

Stories passed along from other owners and locals tell of an old schoolteacher and some former students who haunt the original part of the school building. Other tales mention visits at the school from desperadoes who later were strung up on a nearby hanging tree.

"One of my tenants has some psychic abilities," Miller said.

Over dinner one night, her partner, Curry, related stories he had heard from his family about an American Indian who met his maker at that tree in the early 1900s. In the early days of Demersville, hostilities grew so tense that a unit of the famed Buffalo soldiers was moved in to keep the peace between the settlers and Indians.

"I've heard a lot of stories," Miller said with a laugh. "It just depends on what you believe and what you don't."

She said she will take only happy memories with her when she moves out at the end of this year. Like the rural schools of old, the little apartment complex served as a community for its residents.

"I think of all the parties, Halloween and Christmas get-togethers," Miller said. "We've really had some extraordinary times here. But it's time to let go."

She hopes someone will contact her at 257-4642 or Wachholz at Coldwell Banker at 751-4300 to carry on the dream she had of doing a first-class renovation of Demersville School.

"They probably only want the original part of it," she said. "It's got so much potential."

Miller believes that the newer wing was added sometime in the 1970s. On a tour outside the building, she pointed out the foundation which formerly held the teacher's quarters.

She speculates that the little building, which held just a bed, table, lamp and woodstove, was taken down because it blocked the view from the schoolhouse.

"Up until three years ago, we had all the playground equipment," Miller said. "We donated it to Fortine School."

She said that Somers School still has the bell from the intact tower that preserves the building's noble past as an institution of learning. Without a new patron, the distinctive tower will topple just five years short of the school's centennial celebration.

No matter what happens, Miller has no regrets for the years or money she invested in her old friend.

"I think I'm really blessed to have lived in a schoolhouse," she said.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.