The alumni of the old Smithfield Elementary School on James Street are rapidly passing from the scene. 

Lest the building be forgotten completely to future generations, let me reach deep into my old brain to recall some of its traits and our young experiences there. (If I get some facts wrong, I trust that another old-timer will set me straight.)

The elementary school was a one-story brick building located at the corner of James and Washington streets on property now being developed with houses. Across James Street was Smithfield High School. It was also a handsome brick building, but two stories (three if you included the basement, which housed classrooms and restrooms).

The elementary school, if I recall correctly, included six classrooms, four facing the street and two across the main hall. Also across the hall were restrooms and a small gymnasium.

The elementary and high schools were built to complement each other. The high school had an auditorium, complete with balcony seating, that served not only students but the broader community as well. 

The high school had no gymnasium. Students used the one in the elementary school. That space also did double duty as a location for student sock hops.

The elementary school seemed massive to a first grader. Its tall ceilings, wooden floors and the smell of oil used repeatedly to condition the floors are vivid memories. As you entered the building, a print of Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy hung on the facing hall. I’m sure it wasn’t a valuable print and have no idea what happened to it.

Each classroom had a set of book cabinets with glass-paneled doors. The cabinets indeed held books, but were also storage for student lunch bags and boxes. By the time I entered school, the cabinets had the permanent essence of bananas, peanut butter and apples. Not a bad fragrance, actually.

We didn’t have to take our lunch, though most of us did at least sometimes. Teachers would accept money first thing each morning in exchange for lunch tickets, and a tally of who would eat cafeteria food was then transmitted to the staff of a freestanding cafeteria, located a few yards from the school. 

In the kitchen at the back end of the cafeteria was a large propane-fired cast iron stove, similar but much bigger than old wood-fired kitchen stoves. On that beast, cafeteria staff labored to prepare hotdogs and beans (the beans were pretty bad, to my memory) as well as excellent soups and other dishes that could be produced in large quantity. On Fridays, leftover soups were combined into a stick-to-your-ribs vegetable soup.

After lunch, there was a recess break. Boys back in those days almost universally carried pocketknives, and were prone to playing mumbley peg, a knife-tossing exercise that would give a case of the vapors to modern educators. (Note: To any students who might read this, knives will get you expelled today. DO NOT carry one.)

There was a merry-go-round powered by students running in a circle to make it go, and nearby, a very tall slide. You could speed your way down the slide if you saved the wax paper in which your peanut butter sandwich was wrapped, sat on it and pushed off. It was quite a ride.

It was in this environment that we began our education. This was the beginning of the baby boomer cycle, and the student population was growing. Our class, which first entered its doors in the fall of 1952, had over 60 members divided into two classes of just over 30 each. We were one of the largest classes to date.

The surge in enrollment forced the construction of more classes, and by the time we entered second grade, a modern addition had been added to the elementary school. It included what was considered back then a very modern library that did much to expand our horizons.

The elementary school remained in service until Smithfield High School was moved in 1980 to Turner Drive. After students left James Street for the final time, both buildings became vacant — and rapidly deteriorating — legacies.

Community efforts to save both the original section of the elementary school and high school ultimately failed, and they were demolished.

A new wing of the high school fared better. The local Benjamin P. Chapman Memorial Library had recently come under the umbrella of the Rawls Library and the county, which owned the school property, agreed to create library space there. 

Under the guidance of the late Dr. A.C. Rogers, Paul D. Camp Community College agreed to open a Smithfield facility in the upstairs section of the high school wing. And the YMCA took the gymnasium and in time built a modern addition that flourishes today.

The late Elsey Harris, who was town manager during the 1970s and ’80s, had workers salvage a concrete frieze that stood over the entrance to the old elementary school. It was put in storage and later installed above the entrance to the library. It depicts two lamps of learning flanking three books, an appropriate reminder of an old public building dedicated to expanding young minds.

 

John Edwards is publisher emeritus of The Smithfield Times. His email address is j.branchedwards@gmail.com.