Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Standing by their Wayside

Vonnie Hale leads efforts to save community center at old Montfort School

With the future of the Wayside Community Center in north Spokane County in peril earlier this year, longtime residents are joining forces to keep the volunteer center from being lost.

Vonnie Hale, who lives on her family’s 1891 homestead, has been organizing her lifelong neighborhood to bring new life to the old center, housed in the historic Montfort School that dates to the late 1800s.

She went from house to house leaving leaflets and began phoning neighbors.

At a meeting in June, about 50 people turned out to save the center. Another meeting is scheduled for tonight at 7 at the center on Monroe Road just east of Austin Road.

Hale, who remembers seeing Santa at the center when she was a child, learned about a threatened closure from a reader board outside the center a few months ago. Apparently, the number of volunteers had dwindled and the remaining center volunteers were tiring of doing all of the work to keep it open, she said.

“I saw the sign, and I said, ‘No. No. No.’ This is not going to happen,” she said.

The center has been home to club activities, spaghetti dinners, community events, family occasions and holiday programs since 1946, the year its school classes were merged into the Mead School District. The building was turned over to the county under a deed restriction from the original donor of the property.

Neighbors said they want to preserve the legacy of the former Montfort School and subsequent community center as a way to keep the close-knit feel of the rural neighborhood in an era of growth and change.

Cherri Massender, one of the new members and a longtime resident, said, “We want our membership to grow and get interested in saving this … so their kids and grandkids can use it.”

The new members want to expand the center’s uses to include a youth group, farmers’ market, social nights, a theater night and more music events.

“It’s exciting. There is so much potential,” said Kim Tomson, who grew up in the area and is one of the new members.

The center has a rich history that parallels the growth of the Spokane region.

In 1881, Harriet Carilla Monfort came to Spokane on the first Northern Pacific Railway train to arrive in the city, a widow with six children to raise. She homesteaded at what is now the southwest corner of Austin and Monroe roads and opened a one-room school in 1887.

The school was moved a short distance east to its present location in 1891 on land donated by the C.J. Dileo family with the stipulation that it always be kept in school or community use.

Hale’s great grandfather, Albert Burchett, served on the Montfort School District board from 1899 to 1922. The name of the district was apparently a misspelling of Monfort. A second, larger room was added in 1910 with a stage at one end.

“My grandma and her 11 siblings went here,” Hale said. Her extended family still gathers at the center for holiday parties.

Much of the interior and some of the fixtures and furnishings remain from that era. When the school closed in 1946, the county took ownership and held it for use by community groups, including the Half Moon Women’s Club and Prairie Riders Group.

Later, ownership went to the fire district, and eventually to the Wayside Community Center board in recent years.

The incoming members said they are planning painting parties and work projects to get the center in better condition, and they are eager to start building a new lineup of activities.

“It’s very exciting,” Tomson said. “There is so much potential.”

“It’s already started. … Everyone is coming together,” Hale said.

Reach staff writer Mike Prager at 459-5454 or by e-mail at mikep@spokesman.com.