UTICA — On Friday evening, students and staff — both past and present — gathered to say farewell to the beloved Washington and Spring Street elementary school buildings. Many took advantage of the opportunity to tour the venerable classrooms and hallways filled with old photos and other memorabilia of 80 years of educational excellence. A video in the Mill Street building gym showed highlights of the school’s history, beginning with construction and newspaper accounts of world happenings at the time, and alumni reminisced and shared their memories of favorite teachers and classmates.
Aileen Hiltner was the school nurse for the North Fork district from 1955 to 2001. She was at Utica Elementary on Friday to visit her old office and tour the buildings. “There are just so many wonderful things that happened in all my years here,” she said. “And, we now have vaccines — polio, mumps and measles. I was here when the school gave those shoots and oral polio vaccine. ... And I remember the civil defense drills.”
Dianna Leasure Thomas, secretary at Newton Elementary, started her education in the Washington School building and also had classes at Spring Street and Mill Street. Her class of ’58 was the first to graduate from the “new high school up on the hill.”
“I remember this building (Spring Street) was attached to that building (Washington),” she said. “And there were these humongous steps that you walked on. ... That building had such character.”
The best memory Thomas has of Utica Elementary is the “wonderful teachers. They really cared about their students. They were strict, but that was a different time. The teachers were in charge and the students and the parents knew that.”
Retiree June Mentzer, the first school psychologist, also praised the teachers at Utica. “I had all the schools in Licking County,” she said, “but I really loved it here. The teachers always made me feel like I belonged. They included me in their wedding showers and baby showers and birthday parties.”
Julia Tharp and her daughter, Donna Kreager, said the Utica school community is truly like a family. “This was home,” Tharp said. She graduated from Washington High School in 1948, and later returned as a cook. All four of her children attended Utica as well.
Kreager graduated from Utica in 1968, and Kreager’s daughter Konnie Nelson graduated from the same school in 1988. Kreager’s son, who also graduated from Utica, is planning to move his family back to the village area so his children can go to school at North Fork. “My grandson,” Kreager said, “wants to go to school where his daddy went to school. He said he wants to ‘play ball where my daddy played ball.’ How cool is that?”
The special speaker for the occasion was Gerald Paisola, principal from 1969-88. Then ribbons circumnavigating the entire elementary complex were tied together, symbolizing the unity of the staff and students as they move into one new facility in the fall.
