Vickers School is being restored; school bell is being sought
Jack Alpert at a restored chalk board inside Vickers Schoolhouse, photo from the original article.
This is a republication of “Vickers School is being restored; school bell is being sought” by Chris Anton Paus, Staff Writer at the Miami County Republic, originally published February 5, 1997.
Jack Alpert’s project grew out of family history with school area.
Jack Alpert is a man with a mission – to restore the one-room Vickers School.
The Alpert family history is entwined with the old schoolhouse, located at 319th Street and Victory Road. Alpert’s grandfather owned the land on which the school stands His father and uncles attended the school, and his mother was a teacher there.
Alpert has kept the old home place and is restoring the school, chalk board by chalk board. His finishing touch will be to rebuild the bell tower that once graced the school’s rooftop. The bell tower was removed and sold years ago. Alpert is building a replica, using as his model a photograph taken in 1912.
Alpert said his motivation is that he likes restoring things. He also is working on a horse-drawn buggy that had belonged to his grandfather.
Alpert and his wife, Frieda, live in a brick ranch home across the street from the farmhouse where he grew up and just a stone’s throw from the schoolhouse.
Nearly every wall of their house contains family history and area memorabilia, photo collages of people and things gone by, old Vickers School rosters, and his mother’s diploma from Ursuline Academy.
“It is interesting once you get into it and look at these people,” Frieda Alpert said.
Their basement has a room full of genealogy records and historical information Alpert’s mother kept. Antique harnesses are neatly laid out on the floor, awaiting restoration.
The history of the Bickers School began in 1869 when Charles Miles deeded 2 acres to School District 49. The first teacher, H. August Floyd, was hired for the 1881-1882 school year.
In 1896, Alpert’s grandfather, Fritz, bought the Miles’ farm.
“He must have bought it for the view. The dirt sure ain’t good enough to farm,” Alpert said.
The view is picture-perfect from atop the 1,025-foot hill where the old farmhouse sits.
Ted Alpert, Jack’s father and his many brothers attended the school that served students from first through eighth grades. Students who went beyond the eighth grade attended Paola High School. The early years saw classes of about 25 students annually. By the time the school closed in 1963, there were only about 10 students.
Like Many people of his time, Ted Alpert finished his schooling at Vickers. In the early 1940s, he was attracted to a young school teacher, Opal Hahn. Ted Alpert met Hahn one rainy day at the home where she was boarding so he could offer her a raincoat and walk her to school.
“It was intentional by design,” Jack Alpert said.
Hahn taught at Vickers School from 1941 through 1944. After marrying Alpert, she retired from full-time teaching and worked as a substitute at the Lutheran school in Paola.
She and Ted Alpert never had children of their own. They adopted Jack when he was 10 years old.
“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.
The school graduated its last class in 1963. From then until 1969, the local 4-H group used the building, converting the school into a meeting hall by adding a kitchen, laying linoleum over the wood floor and covering the chalk boards with fabric panels.
Jack and Frieda Alpert lived near Joplin, Mo., until 1987, when he moved back to Miami County to care for his aging parents. He fixed up the schoolhouse for his daughter to live in.
When she moved out, his began to see other possibilities for the building. He stripped the old linoleum and put down new tiles. He used green tiles to write 4-H and a “V” for Vickers. Alpert repaneled the walls. The old wainscoting had so many layers of paint, it would have been nearly impossible to strip.
“This is as close as I could get to the original,” he said about the wall panels.
Jack’s renovation to the interior of Vickers Schoolhouse as seen in 2016 when the property sold to it’s next caretaker.
What has been the most fun so far, he said, was stripping away the cloth panels and newer green chalk boards that covered the old blackboards. Hidden behind one panel was a board that still had a morning class schedule written on it. The morning began with reading and ended with arithmetic. Assignments were noted for each grade. Alpert thinks the schedule dates back to about 1917.
The original boards were not slate, but were made of lathe and plaster and painted black. When they required refinishing, they simply got a new coat of paint.
Alpert has made other discoveries as he has worked on the building, finding things he can’t identify.
“I wish someone could tell me what this was for,” he said, holding a wood tablet with a spring-loaded lever on it.
When the inside is completed, Alpert will turn his attention to the outside. He wants to remove the tin roof and replace it with shingles, restore the playground equipment and boys’ and girls’ outhouses and, lastly, rebuild the bell tower. That will be placed on top of the roof by a crane, he said, admitting to acrophobia in his older age.
The bell tower was 7 feet, 5 inches tall and 18 inches wide. The bell is long gone. It was given to the man who dismantled the tower.
“He was given a very valuable bell,” Alpert said.
He is searching for another school bell for the finishing touch. It won’t be placed in the bell tower, but somewhere that people can see it.
When the work is complete, Alpert wants to find someone to live in the building and help care for it, someone who won’t hang up pictures and make holes in the chalk boards he restored.
It is a labor of love, not of profit.
“This work ain’t going to make me money, but sometimes you do things for the satisfaction of it,” Alpert said.