ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 1996 TAG: 9609170049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: GOODVIEW
SOURCE: JOANNE POINDEXTER STAFF WRITER
REMEMBER THE CUPS made of school papers? And ``andy over?'' Remember the old two-room schoolhouse in Bedford County?
The entrance to the old two-room school has been moved to the side, and the pine trees where kids played are older and taller. But former students at Green Spring School remember their times here with fondness.
Lena Quarles Basham and Delores Payne Davis, 1945 graduates, remember a game - "andy over" - where one team would stand on one side of the white-frame schoolhouse and yell "andy over" as they threw a ball over the roof to another group of students. The team that got the ball over the roof the most times won.
Robert Bonds points out where the outdoor bathrooms, the volleyball court and the marbles circle were.
Property owner Linda Steele's trailer home sits on the old ball diamond behind the schoolhouse, about seven miles east of Stewartsville in Bedford County.
Steele knew the building had been a school when she bought it about four years ago; but until some alumni visited recently, she didn't know the porched entrance had been moved to what the alumni remembered as the side of the house. The schoolhouse was the second building for all-black Green Spring, whose name was taken from a church in the community.
Steele is the fourth owner since Green Spring School closed in 1959 and was sold at auction.
Alumni are planning a reunion Saturday and have invited everyone who attended. Former pupils of Chamblissburg School also are invited, because they attended Green Spring after Chamblissburg closed in the early 1930s.
Organizers are expecting 150 people for a dinner and social hour at the Salem Civic Center. They estimate about 3,100 children went through the school in grades three through seven. The oldest living alumnus is in his mid-90s, but he probably won't attend the reunion because of his health, organizers said.
Although a few graduates remain in Bedford County, many are spread throughout the country. Clyde Basham, an alumnus and retired New York educator, will speak at the reunion dinner. Several alumni, such as Davis, the reunion chairwoman, have returned to Bedford County after retirement.
The Bedford County School Board spent $897.73 for lumber and paid Arch Franklin $380 to build the two-classroom schoolhouse in 1928. In the 1930s, another classroom, built of concrete, was added. By comparison, Bedford's newest school, Montvale Elementary, which opened Sept. 3, cost about $5.2 million and has 317 students.
Green Spring pupils graduating from the seventh grade had to go to Salem, where they attended the old G.W. Carver High School. For Robert Bonds, that meant leaving home at 7:15 a.m. and returning about 5:15 p.m.
Bedford County paid Salem tuition for the pupils and paid Basham's father, John Quarles, to drive them to Vinton, where they would catch a Roanoke County bus to Salem.
Basham and Davis said they often questioned why they passed Roanoke's all-black Lucy Addison High School to attend Carver.
"Tuition was cheaper," and the all-black Bedford Training School was crowded, volunteered Bonds, a 1943 Green Spring graduate, who returned to teach in the school's final year.
He followed his sister, Myrtle, as one of the 20 or so teachers at Green Spring. Their father, Eldridge Bonds, had donated land for the Chamblissburg School, which has become a residence on Virginia 24, across from their homeplace.
Green Spring at one point had a hard time keeping male teachers because most of the boys were "grown men at 16 or 17 years old," Basham recalled.
The boys would run off the male teachers, Bonds said, but one who stayed laid a .45-caliber gun on his desk the first day and never had any problems from the male students thereafter.
Bonds also remembered that students had to get water from a well. "The teacher told us to bring a glass from home," said Basham. But Bonds and others used to make cups out of their school papers.
"The only problem was, you drank the water and ink all together," he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: NHAT MEYER\Staff. 1. Robert Bonds demonstrates theby CNBtechnique of making a paper cup. It's a skill he honed at Green
Spring School every time he wanted a drink of water from the old
well. 2. Getting ready for the reunion are former schoolmates (from
left) Robert Bonds, Lena Quarles Basham, Delores Payne Davis and
Phyllis Brown Bonds. color.