Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 11 · column 1 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
By Barbara Aixilfi Special to the Rappahannock News
“In 1935 we moved out of the (Shenandoah National) Park in a wagon and I started school for the first time in Sperryville that year,” recalled Lee Anna Atkins Wharton, now almost 80.
Since there was no school in the park and her parents had not attended school, the transition to the Sperryville School heralded a new era for the young girl.
Lee Anna was among some 60 former students who attended the Centennial Celebration and Reunion on July 19 at the Sperryville School. Sponsored by the Rappahannock Nonprofit Center, the potluck dinner gave former students the opportunity to renew friendships and share stories.
Mary Elizabeth Clatterbuck recalls a “happy time at the Sperryville School with wonderful teachers. My math teacher. Cotton Miller, really opened my mind to math. Mrs. Winfry, the English teacher, taught me to write letters. What they taught me helped me to make a living."
Mary' Elizabeth lives in Arlington but has her summer home in Old Hollow on Swindler Hollow Road in what was formerly the Sycamore School that closed when the Sperryville School opened. Mary Elizabeth attended Sperryville for grades 4-12 and graduated in 1948, the year the auditorium burned.
Bobby Rutherford, a 1957 high school graduate and Vietnam veteran, recalled that snow was no deterrent to school attendance. His dad used to walk first from the house to the bus stop, breaking the snow for his seven children to follow behind. Bus drivers Luther Payne and James Harris “put on chains and kept on going and the roads were not plowed" on the bus route that included Gid Brown mid Harris Hollow roads, he said.
In a recollection that touched on the issue of segregation. Bobby recalled that as the bases for the African American children and those for the white children passed each other on the road, it became a childhixd ntual to tear off pieces of their lunch bags, lower the window s and have a good natured spit ball fight with each other.
Dolly Atkins had attended grades 1-5 at Scrabble School and recalls that she moved to the Sperryville Schixil where African American and white children attended school for the first time together: "1 was excited to be at school Most of the kids played together outside of school so we all got along very
75.2%