From the Capital-Journal:
Bob Dolezilek at Victor School speaking of his Czech heritage
Pauline (Timmons) Conley who attended Victor School
Perhaps because it was in the mid 20s outside, Pauline Timmons Conley’s memory of her days in the 1950s in the one-room Victor Schoolhouse about six miles north of Rossville turned to tomato soup.
“When I was in seventh grade, I believe, we started having hot lunches in school,” she said Thursday at a 125th birthday party for the school, which since 1981 has been one of the historic buildings in Old Prairie Town at the Ward-Meade Historic Site.
In her old classroom where some of the alumni of the school gathered for the anniversary, Conley added, “It was usually tomato soup. Every day.”
“Every day,” a former classmate repeated, drawing a laugh.
“But it was warm,” Conley said.
“And tapioca,” added another Victor School alumnus, Doug Martinek, about one of the other things on the spare school menu at the rural Shawnee County school that operated from 1881 to 1954.
“Oh, I love tapioca to this day,” a smiling Conley agreed.
The soup was heated on a two-burner hot plate in a corner of the classroom and served up in bowls the pupils brought from home and washed themselves.
Conley also recalled how her teacher, Mrs. Flossie Huntsman, used to take a nap every afternoon, which is when the schoolchildren would go outside for recess. Among their games, Conley said, was tossing a ball over the roof from one side of the school to kids on the other side.
“And we’d be very careful not to hit the school and wake her up,” said Conley, who spent seventh through eighth grade at Victor, a experience she admitted loving.
So much so, she said: “When I got to eighth grade and I was told I was going to have to go to the ‘city’ for school, Rossville High School, I bawled and I bawled. But Momma said, ‘You’ve got to go to high school.’ ”
When Conley graduated in 1957 from Rossville High School, she was the first in either her mother’s or father’s family to achieve that level of education.
Martinek, whose father taught at Victor and who serves as a curator of sorts for it as an Old Prairie Town attraction, said it stands as a reminder to visitors of the more than 4,000 one-room schools that dotted Kansas.
Among those visitors on Thursday were the third- and fourth-grade pupils of Rossville Elementary School who got to see where some of their great-grandparents got their early education.
