The city of Callaway must dismantle and piece back its one-room schoolhouse to save its historical value after being damaged by the storm.
91-year old Lillian Patterson lives in Callaway, Florida. Down the road from her is a 108-year-old one-room schoolhouse. “Some of the best minds we have produced in this country was produced in one-room schoolhouses,” says Patterson, “Like Abraham Lincoln."
“Now, this schoolhouse only went to the eighth grade,” says Patterson.
One-room schoolhouse structures built centuries ago rarely act as schools anymore. The structures are mostly museums now and there are not many left in Florida. Hurricane Michael nearly destroyed the one in Callaway. Patterson stayed in the city, even as others left.
“Just about everybody lost a roof,” says Patterson.
After the storm passed, the City’s Leisure Services Director, Tim Legare, went to the schoolhouse.
“It was worse than I could have imagined,” says Legare. Winds blew the schoolhouse off its foundation. A brick crashed through the roof. Window glass shattered along the floorboards, and the front steps are so warped they are not safe to walk on.
“You get up and you go look around you know, you just don’t know where to start when you see something like that,” says Legare.
Some of the old school desks and photos were rescued, but other items like the piano are smashed beyond repair. Kris Hawk is the project manager for Synergy NDS, an emergency response and recovery team that is supporting the City of Callaway.
“We’re going to try to salvage everything that is salvageable,” says Hawk.
The schoolhouse will need to be de-constructed in order to be rebuilt. It will have to be taken down piece by piece. Replacement parts have to match the originals and that’s a bit of a challenge on a century-old building.
“If we can’t come up with reclaimed you know, oak flooring to match, it can be a composite and made to match,” says Hawk.
Composites can be new lumber made to look old. Hawk says the school’s restoration will be a long process, but Callaway locals like John Piercy say it is worth it.
“You know, you just think about all the things they did like jump rope, the playing the ball, the kicking the ball. You know you can look at the old school and your mind can just wonder and you can just imagine how it went when they were going to school back then and it gets close to me," says Piercy.
