Book Description

Birdville School opened in 1922 on the corner of two dirt roads at the edge of a fallow farm. Over the next 67 school years it witnessed, and influenced, the unfolding story of the town that grew up around it, amid flood, brushfire, blizzard, tornado, and earthquake; poverty and prosperity; war, peace, and cold war; and even the collapse of the earth beneath its foundations. Its auditorium and cafeteria hosted PTA meetings, plays, movies, concerts, basketball tournaments, holiday parties, Girl Scout and Boy Scout meetings, polio vaccination clinics, and war-time rationing registrations and scrap-collection drives. Local sand-lot softball, baseball, and football teams competed in the same surrounding fields that swarmed with gleeful children at recess, and that echoed with the roar of low-flying aircrafts snagging mailbags on their tail hooks. Among its staff were thespians, musicians, firemen, outdoorsmen, and athletes, including a singer who performed in the Coolidge White House, a candidate for the state legislature, an army medic, and a ball player who faced off against the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Pirates. By the time classes concluded for the last time in 1989, thousands of children - including the author - had benefitted from the care, instruction, and example of the Birdville School family. This book is a feeble tribute to those who made us who we are.