The crowd may be dwindling from the first reunion in 1994 of people associated with the one-room schoolhouse of Pfundstein School District 116, but everybody – even those who weren’t students there – have stories to tell.
This year’s reunion drew 16, six of whom attended the school that opened in 1886 and closed in 1949. It was named, according to research by Helen (Swanberg) Warning, 84, of Mokena, who organized the initial event, for Jacob Pfundstein who owned 320 acres along Manhattan-Monee Road and Schoolhouse Road.
There were many one-room wood structures just like #116 in Manhattan Township, situated every two miles so no student would have to walk further than that to attend school. All eight grades were taught in one room, often putting several members of a family together.
“I remember at one point in our school there were 10 of us and six of us were from our family,” said Warning, adding that the school also served the community as a gathering place.
“People came to the P.T.A. meetings once a month whether they had children (in school) or not because the children always put on a skit or a little play,” Warning said. “So we got to know all the neighbors by that, too.”
That’s why reunions draw more than former students.The first had 41 people and they enjoyed a potluck dinner and reminiscing about one-room school days, just as those at the recent event..
Bernice Voss, 91, of Joliet, was the oldest of the former students. Her story reflects the dedication of a teacher who was not only required to teach, but often to start her day building a fire in the coal stove, among other duties, and for very little pay by today’s standards.
Voss remembers Ella Warren, the teacher who taught Voss from first through eighth grade, as someone who may have literally gone the extra mile for her students. Voss remembers becoming ill with a heart condition when she was in seventh grade and being placed on bed rest and then confined to her home for seven weeks. Voss said Warren came to her home every day after school for several weeks so Voss would not fall behind in her studies.
“She did this on her own,” Voss said. “I was able to pass into my next grade.”
Warning remembered skipping a grade.
“I didn’t have enough to keep me busy and by November, I finished all the third grade work,” Warning said. She said her teacher got permission from the Will County Superintendent of Schools for her to join the fourth grade class of two students: her sister Gladys and Jean Wilber, who became Warning’s life-long friend.
“But I had to do all the fourth grade work to catch up,” Warning said. She completed it by December.
“You could do that in those days,” Warning said.
Some of the memories of Donald Werner and Ralph Swanberg, friends who met in fourth grade, were about Marjorie Moore who replaced Ellen Walsh as the classroom teacher because Walsh became too ill to continue teaching. Moore was a teacher with some progressive ideas.
“(Moore) thought everybody should learn how to play cards,” Swanberg said, remembering that he learned euchre and pinochle. He said everyone played the last hour on Friday afternoon “if you (got) your homework done.”
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Swanberg also remembered that Moore thought the children should play baseball games with children from other one-room schools, so she would pile all eight grades into her car and drive them to another school. At that time, there were about eight students in the school and he remembers six students sitting in the car and he and another boy riding in the trunk.
Moore also drove all of the children to Lockport to visit her stepfather who was blind, Swanberg said, because Moore believed students could learn from seeing how someone who was visually impaired lived.
It was 1949, the last year of country schools, Swanberg said, and he remembers Moore telling the children when she took over, “You’re going to get a different education. We’re going to have fun.”
No matter when their elementary years ended, the Pfundstein alumni said they were sad to leave the “family” they came to know so well during their school years.
Dorothy (Daley) Powell, who traveled from Nineveh, Ind., near Indianapolis, for the reunion, said she attended Pfundstein from 1938 to 1943. When her family moved to Joliet, she had to attend a two-room schoolhouse in town and feared her shyness would keep her new classmates from liking her.
“They didn’t bother with a country kid,” Powell said.
Warning said she and her sister Gladys were nervous about attending Peotone High School after finishing at Pfundstein.
“I just felt we were just in a little family,” Warning said. “We were really nervous. Here we were from the farm and in our own little world.”
Warning has compiled a treasure trove of photos and documents, from a time when penmanship was an art and a source of pride. Drawings, etchings and reproductions decorated most documents and were appropriate to grade levels, whether it be puppies and kittens, patriotic themes or scenes of nature.
A time gone, but not forgotten because of people like Warning, her family and friends.
Ginger Brashinger is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.