LUNCH BUNCH

Remembering wild toboggan rides through Chester’s cemetery drew the loudest laughs around tables in Percy’s Cafe Americana restaurant.

Seven people among a group that met recently for lunch have a connection to a place where school seemed more carefree and small classes forged strong bonds. They attended the original Chester School, a two-room building for grades first through eighth that was torn down in the late 1950s. The school, which was near Bowdish and Dishman-Mica roads, had a bell tower and double doors

Calling themselves The Chester Lunch Bunch, the former students gather once a month at different restaurants to share their lives and memories from the 1940s to mid-1950s.

“School is so different today and so structured – it has to be,” said Mary Ann Skeen, 70. “We used to bring skates to school if it was winter and go skating or sledding. The teacher would sometimes not ring the bell and give us a little longer.”

Skeen’s brother, Marvin Wheeler, went to Chester from 1947 to 1953. He also remembers a certain freedom, beyond the school work at wood desks.

“I remember that we played a lot,” added Wheeler. “We used to sleigh-ride through the cemetery of all things. It had the only hill. No one complained.”

From across the table, Joanne Kerbs finished the thought after a round of laughter. “That was one scary ride,” she said.

Skeen and two former classmates – Dolores Bollman and Janet Whalen – started the lunch gatherings about 15 years ago after a school reunion. The members are now in their 60s or 70s, and some bring husbands along.

One husband and wife in the group, Leo and Dolores Bollman, share Chester alumni status. Dolores was a first-grader when she met Leo, and the pair became sweethearts by the time she was in seventh grade. Although her family had moved to the Freeman area for a few years, she visited regularly and then returned to Chester by seventh grade.

“When I was a seventh-grader and he was an eighth-grader, we started liking each other,” said Dolores.

When Leo left the small school to attend Central Valley High School, Dolores was still at Chester. “His brother, Dick, was our messenger for our love letters. I still have those letters.”

Years later, Dolores was talking with Skeen and Whalen at the school’s reunion about making regular group lunch dates.

“We just get together during the school year. We take the summers off. We just included people as time went by.”

Janet Whalen, who graduated in 1950, went all eight years at Chester.

“The school community was close,” she said. “It was like an oversized family.”

Another group regular, Sally Gerimonte, still lives in the Chester community about half a mile from the former school site. From 1941-49, she attended the first through eighth grade.

She also described a close connection among those in today’s Chester Lunch Bunch.

“It’s just that we grew up together, and we’re still around,” Gerimonte said. “We enjoy each other’s company.”

In a 1930s photo of all grades, about 36 kids stood in front of the school. However, Chester Lunch Bunch members said that during most years, the school averaged about 50 students in all grades.

Gerimonte recalled community dances at the school involving whole families. The parents also returned for end-of-the-year picnics.

Inside the school, the younger students studied in one room while elder classmates worked in the next room. Because the students from different grades often studied and played together, they knew classmates’ siblings.

“With the small classes and the small school, you really got to know each other,” added Gerimonte.

The group remembers favorite teachers who taught them the basics of reading, grammar and arithmetic. One staff member, Nora McNearney, who cooked the meals, also is fondly remembered. “She could cook so wonderfully,” said Kerbs.

“Everyone knew her as Aunt Nora,” added Leo Bollman, who later became a pastor. “The first recess midmorning, we would all go down and make our hug circle. We’d all be hugging and she’d be hugging, too.”

A 1993 picnic was held for Chester School’s 100-year anniversary. Newspaper stories from that year said the structure, built before 1893, was first called Plouf Gulch School and was renamed Chester in 1893.

Chester School was closed in 1955 after consolidating with the Central Valley School District. A teacher’s cottage, now used as a daycare center, remains in the community.

Also remaining are the school memories. Leo Bollman, 71, is willing today to share his secret to winning hide-and-seek. A big pine tree in front of the school was home base. He often got to it first, in round-about fashion, after running behind the school.

Bollman would enter a back door into the basement, where he could scramble over a low cement wall to get into a dirt crawl space with a trap door leading up into the boys’ bathroom. That way, he could sneak through the school undetected.

“You could crawl out and run up out the front door and be to the tree first,” he said. “You got to be free.”