Charm School holds fond memories for students and staff past and present
Built in 1938, Charm School has served a great purpose in the East Holmes School District. Plenty of memories exist there for those who attended.
“Gehen in de schule no viest du klug. Kannst noher springen und spielen genug.”
That old-time Pennsylvania Dutch saying, spoken by Erik Beun, East Holmes School District superintendent, was what he thought about when he was asked to speak about the Charm School property, which will no longer be part of the school district after it was closed after last year and sold Wednesday, May 15 for $430,000.
Translated, that means “go to school and you’ll become smart; later you’ll have time to run and play enough.”
That Beun spoke those words in Pennsylvania Dutch seemed very appropriate because a large percentage of the students who came through the school since it was built in 1938 were Amish. Beun admits he doesn’t speak Pennsylvania Dutch and had to rehearse those lines over and over.
“That saying just reminded me a lot of Charm School and what it must have represented to many of the students coming up through over the years,” Beun said. “It has been a place of learning for many, many years, and I know a lot of people are sad to see it will no longer be a school.”
When Dave Kaufman of Kaufman Realty & Auction rang out the final word “sold” at the auction, the Charm School property was officially no longer a part of the East Holmes School District. Having been purchased by David and Ada Kuhns, owners of Charm Sweet Shoppe Pizzeria, the property will continue to serve Charm and surrounding areas, just in a very different way than it has the past century.
While some were there to bid, many were drawn to the auction for the sake of the memories the school has in their lives and the important role it played in educating people from in their 90s to the youngsters who attended the school in its final year last year.
“On an evening like this, you think about a lot of memories,” Beun said. “When you think of school here and that it was built way back in 1938, there are a lot of memories and history that have happened here for a lot of people. I’m sure it is bittersweet to those who called this school home when they were younger. There are memories of the building and playing on the playground, of their favorite teachers and classmates, and a lot more. There is a lot of history here, and we want to honor that.”
For the past several years, Charm School served as the home for only kindergarten and first-grade students in East Holmes who lived near the Charm area. In the beginning it served as a school for many more grades, albeit the class sizes were much smaller back in the early days.
LaRue Oswald attended Charm School from 1940-46 through sixth grade.
Oswald said that much like it was until the school disbanded last year, the majority of the school population back then was Amish. He said class sizes were six to eight students. Back in that day there were eight grades at the school as compared to recently when only kindergarten and first-grade classes were held at the school.
“I have a lot of good memories of friends from way back when,” Oswald said. “It was just this tiny, little school, and things were a lot different then than they are today. I think it was just a lot simpler back then.”
Paul Mueller was a classmate of Oswald, and he said one thing he remembers was the old coal bin at the school. He also said getting to school was a challenge for many students, but for him, living just a few houses away made for easy walking distance.
“There were no school busses back then, so all of the kids had to walk to school, and some of them lived 2 miles away,” Mueller said. “I can remember working on the Three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic), and the school seemed a lot bigger to me back in that day than it does now.”
Beun said when the decision was made to close the school, the East Holmes board of education explored a number of options on how to best transfer the property back to the community, where it could continue to be a thriving part of the Charm area.
Offering it publicly quickly became the best option.
“The school board wants this to remain a vital part of the Charm community,” Beun said. “We understand what this property means to the community of Charm, and we hope that it will remain a vital part of their community now that it has sold.”
For those who worked and attended in the school’s final year of existence, it also marked a turning of the page, albeit much more recently.
“It’s a little bittersweet,” said former Charm principal Casey Travis, who remains principal at both Wise and Flat Ridge schools. “Fortunately, when we closed Charm, the transition went very smoothly in moving all of the students over to Flat Ridge. Still, there are a lot of memories here for a lot of people, and the sentimentality of it all is what a lot of people are experiencing.”
Whether it was playing tag, learning to write cursive, getting reprimanded by the teacher or perhaps even stealing a first kiss, the memories were flowing as Charm School got its final day in the sun.