Katie Ellington/Mount Vernon News
Sue Perkins Carlson, left, Nancy Vail, center, and Toma Lord discuss their recollections of going to school in the Mulberry Street building during a celebration held Wednesday at the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County. [request]
Old Mount Vernon High School topic at history project event
MOUNT VERNON — Decades after the doors of the Mulberry Street School closed for the last time, memories of the years spent there remain crystal clear in students’ memory.
Nearly 70 former students, teachers and community members gathered Wednesday to swap stories and reminisce during the Memories on Mulberry Street celebration held at the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County. The project was spearheaded by the Knox County Landmarks Foundation in collaboration with the library, the Knox County Historical Society, the Friends of the Library and Kenyon College.
“We noticed whenever there was a story in the newspaper and it was posted on Facebook…the comments that people left were always memories,” said Jeff Gottke, president of the Knox County Landmarks Foundation. “We thought somebody should do something and get this all together so it’s recorded somewhere.”
The lot on Mulberry Street has been home to numerous educational institutions in Mount Vernon, including the remaining building known to many in the area as “the old middle school.” The building was erected in 1938 and served as the local high school until 1969. It then became a middle school and was soon the only middle school in the district after merging with Pleasant Street Junior High in the early 1970s. In 1995, a new middle school was built next to the current high school and the school on Mulberry Street was sold in 1998.
Blair, Nancy Vail and Bruce and Marilyn Hite all mentioned their time in the high school marching band.
“At that time, it was quite an honor to be a member of the marching band. We had to try out,” said Marilyn Hite, who graduated in 1960.
“The band days were the best days of our high school,” added her husband, Bruce. The pair were high school sweethearts and have been married for 55 years.
Cindy Sperry, who graduated in 1965, shared her recollection of one of the more somber moments in the building.
“My junior year kind of had a bad spot in it because that’s when President Kennedy was killed,” she said. “We were in one big classroom in the middle of the second floor, in the front of the building…The announcer came on and let us know and we were dismissed. But I have never ever heard the school totally silent, not one squeak….people crying.”
It was Homecoming weekend, and while she couldn’t remember for certain, she believes the Homecoming celebrations were postponed for a day or two.
During the middle school portion of the event, former teacher Susan Kahrl recalled her first year as a teacher. She was hired right out of college to teach sixth grade at Mulberry Street, which had recently transitioned to a middle school.
“Nobody knew what a middle school was,” she said. “Mount Vernon Middle School was one of the very first middle schools in the state of Ohio.”
When Kahrl walked into her classroom for the very first time, she was shocked to find it nearly empty. There were no decorations, no supplies and no furniture short of a few student desks.
“There wasn’t even a teacher’s desk,” she recalled. “Everything had been cleaned out and moved to the new high school.”
Although Kahrl’s experience at Mulberry Street got off to a bumpy start, she quickly grew to love the building and the students. When the district established its current middle school building in 1998, Karhl was sad to leave.
“It was sort of tough leaving the old middle school. … Those hardwood floors, those wide corridors, such memories we had,” she said. “It served our community for many, many decades very well. So I’m glad we’re here today to celebrate its memory.”
Kent Miller started his career teaching middle school physical education at Pleasant Street Junior High. His time at Mulberry Street began when the students and staff at Pleasant Street were moved to the building in the early 1970s.
“I was kind of disappointed when we had to move from Pleasant Street … to the middle school,” he admitted. At that time, there was a major rivalry between the Pleasant Street Panthers and the Mulberry Street Vikings (later changed to the Mulberry Street Lions).
“I soon began to love the building. It had character. It had characters in it, the students and the teachers,” Miller continued.
When the school closed for good, he was determined to give it a proper farewell.
“I went and bought a very expensive bottle of champagne. … We went in one night about nine o’clock, we sat down on the middle of the basketball floor and we drank that bottle of champagne and tipped our hats and glasses to the middle school,” he said. “I left a lot of my soul and my heart in that building and truly loved it.”
Miller also took a souvenir from the building before it closed — the scoreboard.
“I didn’t want someone to get the old scoreboard, so basically I stole the thing,” he said. Miller managed to unscrew it from the wall, carry it down the balcony and fit it in the back of his Toyota Corolla. After keeping it stowed away for more than 20 years, he announced that he was donating it to the Knox County Historical Society.
After the public speaking portion of the event, guests were invited to stick around, chat and look through old editions of the Mount Vernon High School yearbook, The Forum.
After the Mount Vernon City School District sold the Mulberry Street building, it changed hands multiple times and eventually fell into disrepair. The board of property maintenance appeals formally condemned the building in February, but an appeal filed by a potential buyer has delayed its demolition.
Meanwhile, organizers of the Memories on Mulberry Street event are having ongoing discussions on how to best preserve the history of the school.
According to Linette Porter-Metler, the library’s community relations and public affairs director, the group of organizations involved has already digitized more than 300 old photos submitted by members of the community. Porter-Metler has also recorded 16 interviews with former staff and students about their memories and is working on lining up more. The interviews and photos will likely be transferred to a DVD kept in the library’s archives, shared online, or both.
Anyone interested in sharing photos or memories can call the library and sign up at the main circulation desk.
