School celebrates 100 years

A South Hill elementary school recently celebrated a century of educating students, and one family that has sent five generations of children to the school was among the celebrants.

Adams Elementary School began as the Garden Park School, a two-room wooden building founded in 1902. The school’s first teacher was Clara Nicholls, who taught all of the students.

In 1908, the school was annexed into School District 81 and renamed Adams. Students attended the school through the eighth grade. The brick building on East 37th Avenue was built in 1909 and 1910.

Last week as part of its annual Cultural Night, former students and teachers were invited to a birthday celebration. The library was filled with old pictures, and alumni shared stories on video to collect an oral history of the school.

One family talked about how five generations attended the school. Four of those generations are still around to celebrate Adams.

Joyce Rice-Monroe attended the school after her mother had years before. She laughed that one of her report cards once said, “Joyce is a good student, but she talks too much.”

Her son, Mike Monroe, attended the school in the 1960s.

“We used to have air-raid alerts,” he said.

The school would give each student a piece of paper and send them home, telling them not to make any stops along the way. The parents would sign the paper and write down what time the child arrived.

“We’d leave school at 11 and get home as fast as we can in case we got bombed,” he said.

Monroe’s son and daughter, Tim and Bree also attended the school. Tim attended the celebration with his daughter, Morgan, who is a current student.

JoAnn Geibel-Weberling graduated from the school in 1953. She said she reunites regularly with her Adams classmates. Many of them were in the library with her at the celebration.

Leroy Gardner, Rod Deitz, Carol Gardner-Sims, and Darlene Dierks-Beck were there with their spouses, laughing about old times.

Geibel-Weberling said she has never been to a high school reunion, since she always felt closer to the friends she made at Adams.

Deitz said that he and other students in their class started a singing quartet back when they were in school. The group, called the Adams Bomb, would listen to records and learn the songs from them.

“We sang a lot of Perry Como stuff,” he said.

But the group wasn’t allowed to sing “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” because it was considered too racy.

One of the hallways was decorated with stories and collages of what the current students thought Adams was like for the students of a century ago, what classes are like for them now, and what they think Adams will be like in the future.

Fourth-grader Alex Watson showed off his story to his father, Rob. In the future, his story said, there would be robots that could cry.

Along with the happy reunions and memories, it was Adams’ Cultural Night, the night the school highlights the many cultures of students and families in the neighborhood.

There were activities in almost every room of the school, including room 206, where fifth-grader Nelly Shcherbina read Russian fairy tales and wrote down people’s names in Russian. There were Russian cakes as well.

Her sister, Karina, worked that evening as an ambassador. Dressed in cheerleader uniforms, she and several other sixth-graders answered questions, showed visitors around, and generally helped out when needed.

“When someone’s being bad, we have to stop them,” Karina said.

In other rooms, there were origami lessons, Spanish bingo games, African drumming, crafts, storytelling and more.

In the gym, the Los Vigiles band entertained folks dining on free food from Luigi’s, China Café, Thai Bamboo, Casa de Oro and Little Caesar’s Pizza.

Mary Weber, the principal of the school, said that the evening was accomplished by the hard work of volunteers.

“Our Cultural Night is huge,” she said. “Our families really do this.”