EASTHAMPTON — With a large cardboard presentation board containing a stack of black-and-white photographs tucked under his arm, George Dion strolled through the halls of Maple Street School on Thursday afternoon, remembering what the building looked like more than 70 years ago when he attended the school.

“I started here in 1946. In my head, I can see what used to be here,” Dion said, motioning to a classroom and then poking his head inside. “This room was all cots where we all took naps … Mrs. Ogden, yes, that was her name.”

With brightly colored artwork, letters and numbers now festooning the walls, the room that had previously served as a nap room for Dion and his classmates had more recently served as a learning environment for kindergarten teacher Mary Pat Schmalz’s class.

“It was old when I was here,” he said. “And as I tell my wife, ‘they don’t build ’em like this anymore.’”

Dion was one of many alumni who took a walk down memory lane in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the school building, which opened as an eight-room schoolhouse illuminated by gas lamps in 1897. In recent years, the school was attended by students in preschool through fourth grades.

The celebration Thursday also was bittersweet for many as the event was also a goodbye to the building, which will no longer function as a school.

Hundreds attended the event, which featured student artwork and projects paying homage to different decades and student performances in “The Best of Maple through the Years: The Last Annual Maple School Theme Show.”

Students also wrote farewell letters to the building, which were on display Thursday, pinned to the fence on school’s playground.

“There’s so much history here, and when you start talking to people who loved Maple and have this history and they want to share it, it’s so heartwarming. It’s the spirit I wanted to capture as we say goodbye to this school,” said Maple Street School Principal Judy Averill. “This school has served kids for 125 years. We couldn’t just walk away.”

‘Maple magic’

When Maple Street School opened, its entrance faced Maple Street. An addition was constructed with eight more classrooms in 1924 and the entrance was shifted to its  current location at 7 Chapel St.

An annual report from Easthampton dating back to 1897 champions the building as “new and modern.”

“The moral effect of a large, well ventilated, well lighted room upon the pupils is great, and the arrangement of the building admits of systematic and orderly movements of the schools under one head,” the report reads.

When Dion attended the school, the building served children between kindergarten and eighth grade. On many occasions, he recalls running down to the basement and being sure to avoid windows for air raid drills. But more than anything, the now 82-year-old Northampton resident looks to the building as a place that housed much of his childhood memories.

Visiting room after room with a reporter, Dion would pull out a name or subject taught and share an accompanying memory.

“This room had an interesting teacher,” he said with a snicker. “He’d be talking about science and if you didn’t do the homework or something, you’d talk about World War II because he was a soldier and then he’d go off and tell ya stories. Then bing! The bell would ring and it was over.”

A number of memories and photographs have been shared with Averill, who has been principal at the school for eight years and previously a special education teacher there for nine years, over this past week. She described the school itself as being very special and the community it has housed throughout its time as embodying something called “Maple magic.”

“Once you’re part of this community, you never really leave,” she said.

Many others who attended the school or taught in the building have echoed the same sentiment in an oral history project.

To complete the project, Averill enlisted recent Easthampton High School graduates Brianna Wool and Fiona Graeme, both of whom interned at the school.

“Maple is so special to a lot of people. Everyone was talking about ‘Maple magic’ because they think it’s a close-knit community,” Graeme said.

The pair interviewed, filmed and edited a video compilation of interviews with nearly 20 former students, principals and teachers. The oral history project features a former student who currently lives and teaches in Taiwan.

“I wanted to do this for them — we had such awesome teachers and I truly cannot thank them enough for how much they helped me through my school experience,” Wool said. “I would not be where I am today without them and going the places I am, and majoring in the things I’m majoring in. My teachers had a huge impact on me when I was here and growing up in general.”

Wool and Graeme plan to attend Bridgewater State University in the fall for social work and speech language pathology, respectively.

Moving to Mountain View

On April 12, the School Committee declared Maple, Center and Pepin elementary schools surplus properties and transferred them to the City Council. The Center and Pepin buildings are also more than 100 years old.

A closing house ceremony for Center and Pepin schools will be held on Tuesday, June 21, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.

The event is open to the public and will allow for an opportunity to tour the school buildings one last time. The student end-of-year performances and graduations will be held separately from this event for families of current students.

In the fall, students and staff from the soon-to-be former elementary schools will join others who have already moved in from the former White Brook Middle School to start the school year at Mountain View School.

White Brook Middle School, which was built in the 1970s, was demolished earlier this year.

Averill, who will move over to the new school as an associate principal of students in preschool through second grade, says she hopes to bring some of that Maple magic to Mountain View.

“It’s such a bittersweet occasion — I’ve been crying since 4:30 this morning because we really do love it here,” she said. “But we’re all really excited about the new building and being a part of that larger community.”

Emily Thurlow can be reached at ethurlow@gazettenet.com.]]>