State 1B girls: Colton’s Savannah Chadwick refurbishes history
Savannah Chadwick refers to 80- and 90-year-olds as “kids” with no hint of irony.
After all, what Chadwick and her family have accomplished is tantamount to turning back the clock for a few grateful octogenarians and nonagenarians.
Chadwick, a senior guard for Colton’s record-setting girls basketball team, devised a senior project for the ages: restoring the historic, one-room Taufen Schoolhouse 3 miles outside of Uniontown, just up the road from her family’s home.
Getting everything right involved tracking down former students, now in their 80s and 90s, and asking them to return a survey to provide details.
“All the photos (we had) were black and white, so we didn’t know what the (correct) colors were,” Chadwick said. … “These kids remembered things. Those are the kinds of things that you can’t find in the records.”
The completed restoration stirred some pent-up emotions for the former students, four of whom were given a tour before the grand reopening last September.
“There were a lot of tears in their eyes because they started to remember things that they had forgotten over the years,” Chadwick said.
Chadwick’s grandmother, Barb Meyer, provided the impetus for starting the project. The schoolhouse building, known as District 134 when it operated from 1892-1936, sits on Barb and John Meyer’s property and had been used primarily for storage.
Chadwick and her grandmother focused on historical research, scraping and painting while Chadwick’s grandfather, younger brothers Brady and Reece, an uncle, a cousin and two hired men did the heavy lifting.
The former students, tracked down through old grade books that had been left behind, revealed tiny details to aid with accuracy: how the desks were arranged, the color of the walls, adornments added by teachers.
“The records say the schoolhouse would hold 24, but when you’re in there, there’s no way 24 kids could fit,” Chadwick said.
The “kids” noticed a few inaccuracies during their private tour, but Chadwick took the rebukes in stride.
“They told us little things that were wrong, but we laughed because there was no way we could have known that,” Chadwick said.
The grand opening in mid-September attracted a healthy crowd and something more important to Chadwick: donations to a college scholarship she’s set up in the name of the schoolhouse, to be awarded at Colton’s graduation this spring.
Chadwick plans to attend Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and major in business administration.
The business at hand occurs starting today at the Arena. Colton (24-0), with a girls state-record winning streak of 68 games, will attempt to capture its seventh consecutive State 1B title.