March 29, 2024
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Fondly recalled Presque Isle school closes

PRESQUE ISLE – Though it was the first day of summer vacation, the halls of Cunningham Middle School were packed Wednesday – with former teachers, principals and pupils who told some of their favorite stories about the place.

About 75 people who have worked, learned or both at the 81-year-old building turned out Wednesday morning for a

walk-through organized by local history buff Dick Graves.

Graves, 63, of Presque Isle and a former Cunningham pupil himself, held the event to document the school’s closing and preserve stories about the facility on videotape.

Graves hired a videographer to capture the group’s memories of the building during the walk. He plans to pare down the estimated two-hour video to a 15-to-20 minute film.

Graves held the event on the day after the final day of school for the SAD 1 facility. The Third Street building is closing its doors for good this summer as part of a district reorganization plan that calls for the refurbishing and expansion of 42-year-old Skyway Middle School – which will be renamed Presque Isle Middle School – and the closing of Cunningham. Starting next year, PIMS will serve the district’s entire population of 450 sixth- to eighth-graders. Once the district closes Cunningham, it intends to turn the building over to the city, which is looking into selling the property.

The focus of the day, however, was on the building’s past.

“We’re going to visit every dark nook and cranny that ever was in this building,” Graves told the group at the start of the walk.

The tour wound around the building from the first to the third floor, with brief stops at special spots such as the “haunted room” above the stage and the bomb shelter underneath the cement stairs in the gym. Members of the crowd paused at rooms that held memories for them, and they argued nostalgically over which classroom used to belong to Miss Edith Fairweather, who taught at the school for 45 years.

Teacher Merl Smith’s room was silent, one man remembered.

“Oh, you behaved in his classroom,” Greg Roderick remembered. “If you didn’t, no matter where he was, he’d throw a piece of chalk at you.”

Many of the locals who participated in the tour hadn’t strolled down the school’s halls in decades.

“We came because of the history, to go back to our roots,” Pearl Carmichael, a 76-year-old Presque Isle resident, said on Wednesday.

“We’ve been out of school for 58 years,” said Francis Allen, a 77-year-old Presque Isle resident. Carmichael and Allen were classmates at Cunningham and went through high school together during World War II.

“It’s not like it used to be,” Carmichael said glancing around the halls. “We didn’t have lockers out here. We had coat closets in the classrooms.”

“It’s changed,” Allen said, “but I wouldn’t get lost in it, either.”

The two believe something should be done to preserve the building.

“It has a sentimental attachment to many people in this territory,” Carmichael said.

“Especially us old people,” Allen said.

He and Carmichael shared a chuckle then joined others in remembering old friends and recounting more stories that seemed to echo through the halls.


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