October 30 Edition

"Direct my footsteps according to your word; let no sin rule over me." --- Psalm 119:133

Birthdays this week include: Calvin Warner, Ken Simmons and Betty Warner - Oct. 26, Jamie Weeks - Oct. 27, Don Langford - Oct. 29, Alice Watkins - Oct. 31, Amy Pilkington - Nov. 1. Happy belated birthday to Ted Langford - Oct. 23.

Here we are coming in on November already and the weather is right on schedule.
New Edinburg Community Center is hosting a benefit dinner for Larry Briant November 7 from 5-7:30pm. BBQ pork plates will be sold for $10, and the famous Brothers 189 Band will play. All proceeds go to Larry and his wife Becky as Larry recently had to have a foot amputated due to diabetes.
West Saline Community Center is holding its annual Spook House in the school building on Saturday, October 31st from 7pm until midnight. Admission is a one time charge of $2. For the little kids who might not be quite ready for the unspeakable horrors therein, WSCC will have games and candy for them from 2pm to 4pm.
West Saline Community Center is holding its annual Spook House in the school building on Saturday, October 31st from 7pm until midnight. Admission is a one time charge of $2. For the little kids who might not be quite ready for the unspeakable horrors therein, WSCC will have games and candy for them from 2pm to 4pm.

New Edinburg Fire Department will host a Trunk-or-Treat at the fire station on Halloween from 4pm to 6pm with candy for the kids.

At age 92, Clyde Moseley was laid to rest at Shady Grove Cemetery last Thursday.

Last Sunday was the last Sunday for Bro. Billy Wilson and his wife Glenda at Macedonia Free Will Baptist Church, as the Wilsons will be moving to Bella Vista. Bro. Billy has preached there for ten years, but told me he felt it was time to move on. The New Edinburg area is losing one of its best ministers as is Macedonia, and we will all miss him. Thank you, Bro. Billy for everything you have done for our little town.

With our string of articles on the schools of the New Edinburg area, we close out with the main school itself and its long history. I will not copy from Schools of Cleveland County, but rather tell the story from my own research: the first school building in the town was built in 1860 on the site where the post office now sits. Ten years later, to accommodate the rising population, a new school was built directly across the road where Leslie Stewart's house now sits.

In 1904, again to handle the rising population, the Attwood family donated a 13 area pasture as a site for a new and better school building. A frame two story building was constructed with additions such as a cafeteria were added over the next decade. In 1930, it was decided to build a new, brick building on the spot; the frame building was torn down (its lumber was used to build an agri building... yeah, the agri building was THAT old). The brick school served until 1936 when it was destroyed by fire. Curiously, that school, Kingsland School, and Rison School all burned within a year or so of each other and all three were replaced with WPA projects built by government money. Draw your own conclusions there.  Some time in the 1930s, an old Presbyterian church building was acquired, moved to the school grounds, and converted into a Home Economics building which stood until after the school closed.

In 1947, the old gymnasium (which had a second story used by the Free Masons and the Odd Fellows as a lodge) burned, and a new one was constructed which still stands today. That gymnasium also had the first indoor restrooms on that campus.

In January 1957, the WPA school burned due to a wood heater left burning all night. At that time, there was a push to consolidate the school district with Kingsland, but wiser heads prevailed. The Superintendent at that time, Sam King,  journeyed to Little Rock and apparently had some pull with the State Board of Education because he returned with a check big enough to build a new brick structure... the one that stands today, and built according to his architectural plans.

It was a space age school for its time with modern architecture, tiled floors, indoor restrooms, a kitchen, and an air-conditioned cafeteria that doubled as an auditorium. It was also short one room on each wing, so the math classes floated on the high school side while the elementary side built two metal buildings on the play ground... one for the 6th grade and one for the elementary remedial reading room.

The new NES desegregated in 1967. Before that, black elementary students attended St. John's School next door, while the black high school students bused to Fordyce. It was controversial, to say the least, with many prominent white citizens taking it badly. I have been told by some older blacks in this area of fights and other harassment of the black students by some white students, but it should also be said that many white students went out of their way to make the black students feel welcome. It should be noted, and this a typical of desegregation in the South, that the only black teacher from St. John's to be hired by NEW was Mr. Brice Clay who served almost twenty years as the Elementary remedial reading teacher as well as the coach for many pick up games of softball and kickball on the playground.

In 1976, due to new state policies, NES was forced to institute a Kindergarten program. Many of us still alive today never went to Kindergarten; rather the First Grade was a combination Kindergarten/First Grade. The school district moved the old St. John school on to the playground and renovated it to have a new Superintendent's office and a Kindergarten while moving the First and Second Grades there. This freed up considerable space in the main building.

Staff changed. Teachers came and went and new policies affected the school district in a bad way making it tough for the school board to keep the place open. The town's population was dwindling as families moved elsewhere to find decent jobs. The school's enrollment dropped considerably, and the last graduating class had eight graduates. That was in 1985 and the axe finally fell. NES could no longer meet state requirements. The district merged with Kingsland School district  that year.

The original plan, as I recall, was for both high schools to merge in Kingsland, while both elementaries would merge in New Edinburg. The outcry among Kingsland residents about having their children bused to New Edinburg prevented the second half of the plan from happening, and that's ironic since it was the Redland vote that prevented Kingsland Schools from suffering the same fate at New Edinburg the following year. New Edinburg Elementary met for two more years before it too folded into Kingsland.

A wise man once told me that when you lose your school, you lose your community, and I think that's true. After the shut down of the schools, New Edinburg as a community has limped along since then not only due to the loss of its most precious resource... the raising and molding of its children... but due to the lack of commerce as stores up and down the street finally disappeared. Any present or future attempts to revitalize this town will, in my opinion, succeed only if they look to the future and not try to hang on too tightly to the past. And you might want to think about a school, lest you find yourself spinning your wheels...

But let's do keep in mind the long litany of local people who taught at the school, not necessarily for the paycheck, but because they thought the children were worth it: Joann Hall, Kay Childress, Joe Daniel, Marvin King, Betty King, Bernice Parham, Odell Wolfe, Nolan Brown, Iva Hicks, Gene Franklin, Lorraine Taylor, Jonalyn Reep, Deb Jones, Anita Knowles, and a host of others with many names lost to history.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is a wrap for me and this column. In the words of my generation: it's been real, it's been fun, but it hasn't been real fun.  Go Eagles.