School picked clean by history hunters

In an onslaught that may have resembled the Oklahoma Land Rush, salvagers poured

into Whitefish Central School on Friday to stake their claim.

In an onslaught that may have resembled the Oklahoma Land Rush, salvagers poured into Whitefish Central School on Friday to stake their claim.

By 6 p.m. that day, the pace was still frenzied as Superintendent Jerry House used a bullhorn to announce the school was closing for the night. Much of the historic school's memorabilia has been stripped away, but the salvage operation continues until 6 p.m. Wednesday.

The Whitefish School District opened the hallowed halls to history hunters in an effort to save usable items before the 1912 brick building is torn down this summer. Central School is being demolished and rebuilt in phases and will be replaced with a new facility a year from now.

"Overall, it went well," Assistant Principal Kerry Drown said. "I was amazed at what people wanted. They really gutted it."

Four hours into the process on Friday, Dave Hazen was pleased with his bounty. He got a couple of blackboards he intends to use as countertops in a house he's building in Haskill Basin. Hazen also was taking electrical outlets and some fir windowsills.

"This old wood is nice," he said. "I'm thinking about getting some hardwood flooring, but it will take some time to get."

While he pondered the hardwood flooring, David and Jen Elden were already using crowbars to rip up flooring in the library area.

"We bought a house in Whitefish in December and we're tearing the carpet out," Jen Elden explained. "There are plywood floors underneath and we thought this hardwood flooring would be great."

Dismantling the old wooden floor, board by board, took a fair amount of manual labor, as did most of the ripping and stripping that went on throughout the school. The power was shut off in the building, so salvagers were confined to crowbars and battery-operated power tools.

People generally came in pairs, Drown said, so one could guard the cache while the other scavenged classrooms. There weren't any reported fights over the goods, but people were "very possessive."

Joanie Sorensen lamented the demise of the landmark building as she pounded nails out of trim boards in her old sixth-grade classroom.

"I feel very badly. They're tearing down all the historic things in town," she said, listing Whitefish's first hospital, the Memorial Field bleachers, Riverside Park footbridge and the school among the treasures the town has lost.

Don Hunt was among the many former students who wanted something - anything - as a souvenir of the years they toiled over textbooks.

"I started fifth grade in this very room," said Don Hunt, who moved to Whitefish in 1969. "This place has a lot of memories."

Hunt found a tattered bookcase and planned to use it in his garage.

"Everybody I know when to school here," he said. "My kids went to school here and my mom substitute taught in this room."

Vivian Hull, who attended Central School all 12 years and later worked as a secretary there, got a chance for a final walk-through with one of the current teachers on Thursday evening. She snapped photographs of the old steam radiators, the long, antique drinking fountains equipped to handle several thirsty youngsters at one time, her first-grade room and other places where memories were made through the years.

"I'm glad they opened it up to the public. The community has a lot of affection for this school," Hull said. "It's kind of sad, but to see what they're going to move into, the new school is going to be so nice."

Hull and her husband, Albert, who also attended Central School for several years, didn't take anything for posterity, but their daughter got a desk and a clock.

June Leverson wanted one last look at the school Friday afternoon, and said what she saw an hour after the salvaging began resembled a movie scene of people looting a store during a riot.

"I'm glad to know they're going to recycle some of it, though," she said.

Felicia Stimson, a former teacher at the school, arrived Monday before noon to get a piece of blackboard. All of the blackboards were "hot commodities" and long gone, Drown said, but he walked her through the building and they found a broken piece of chalkboard about one foot square. That was enough of a keepsake for Stimson.

Pieces of Central School will live on around Whitefish in myriad ways.

Spiral ventilation caps taken from the roofs were destined for planters. One man dismantled lockers to use the steel as siding on an outbuilding.

Some ventilation turbines over the auditorium were removed by vandals and thrown to the ground. Those will have to be replaced, Drown said. A few other items - some speakers and larger pieces of teacher equipment - were marked as off-limits but disappeared in the rush.

Officials caught a couple of youths trashing what remained of the building and sent them on their way, Drown said.

By Monday morning, the school had been reduced to an empty shell. The doors were done; so were most of the windows. Old school papers were strewn everywhere, a reminder of the human cyclone that had passed through on a mission for memorabilia. Decades' worth of grime and dozens of long-lost pencils were revealed on the floor in areas where lockers were once situated. Debris made it difficult to navigate the hallways.

A kind of eerie silence had settled over the building, a lack of sound that drove the realization home:

School's out for good at the old Central School.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com