Robert Deen recently sent me this old photograph, which I would guess was made in the mid-to-late-1950s. The school appears to have been built in the late 1920s or early 1930s and was destroyed by arson in the early 1960s. Though it’s long gone, it still has many active alumni who gather in Willacoochee each year for a reunion, the weekend after July 4th. Mr. Deen’s mother, Ruth, taught first grade here in the 1950s. Many thanks to him for sharing this image.
Wow. That’s a blast from the past. I attended all the 10th grade and half of the 11th there. Many, many good memories. Played on the girl’s basketball team ( i wasn’t very good), rode my horse in one of the parades, learned to drive in an old truck with no brakes, and
my very best friend was Glenda.
Would your friend have been Glenda Futch Yawn? She played on the basketball team also. I am her niece and seem to recall hearing stories of a friend named Pat.
yes. Glenda was my very best friend. We lived pretty close to each other, on the same dirt/sand road. She was certainly a character. We spent a lot of time at Dorothy and Edgar’s, too. To get money for the Picture Show, she would take orders for strawberries from the ladies in town. We’d pick them, put them in a quart canning jar, and deliver them on horseback. We worked in tobacco one Summer, both as “handers”. Later on, she was a “picker “. I’d kept all the letters she had written after I had tearfully moved away, and brought them with me on a visit to ‘Coochee. We read them all and laughed ‘til our sides ached! She said she took them to Diane’s after I left the next day.
I didn’t live in Willacoochee very long but it is a powerful memory to me.
Is this the school that was in town near Willacoochee Methodist?
Yes it was it is all gone except to old gym and it is falling. I live just past the church my back yard joins the church yard, I was raised in Willacoochee and married one of the Russ twins
I believe it was.
My Grandfather is buried in the old cemetery. This was about 1910. have they cleaned up the cemetery recently? Nicholas Henry Propes. Pretty town.
Jud is correct the building burned in the summer of 1970.
The Willacoochee school was built somewhere in 1905-1909, I believe. It was destroyed by fire in July or August 1970 (not sure if it was arson, but it was suspected to be).
This brings back soooo many memories. But I think it must have burnt after 1965 because, I remember going as far as the 8th grade. It saddened me when it burnt as I love history now. I gues as you get older, you appreciate all that you hated as a child. Patricia Toliver Sills Hilton
Ms. Deen was my 1st grade teacher, I still remember how much I loved her for her kindness and love she showed us. On the first day of school we received a Coke pencil, writing tablet, and a ruler. She taught us to read using the Alice and Jerry Readers, opening a whole new world to us farm children. Some of my memories are of the other friendships I made, the downtown Christmas Tree, Halloween Carnival at the gym, how I would go to sleep every day on the long bus ride home, getting vaccination shots from the visiting nurse, and the fear we soon learned about the electric paddle in the Principal’s office. One day the baseball team came back from playing Lax, and they carried an injured player off the bus. They said he went after a fly ball and ran into a sycamore tree. I can still remember the smell of those floors on the first day of school, I regret someone burned this school, but they will never replace the great memories we have of it.
I like this old building ,look at all those large windows ,very unique .
There was also another wing. It was to the left of and behind the auditorium and was a one story unit that housed the lower grades.