REPLY TO LETTER OF INQUIRY
You asked about the old Weyers Cave (Va) school building.
You were right in assuming that it was built bit-by-bit. The initial portion - the red brick, many-windowed structure facing the Keezletown Road on the north side was built the year I was born - 1916. And it has been growing and dying ever since.
I suppose I have a certain affinity with the old school even though I am not from this area, and never attended school there. We came into existence at about the same time and have witnessed many of the same eras even though we had always been apart. Many people I have come to know in later years, did go to school there - some for all the school they ever had ...first grade through the High School years.
It quickly became a community center and all sorts of gatherings were centered there. One of them, before my time in the area, has appealed to me as being a wonderful thing for a small, rural town in Virginia to have had.
Do you recall what the National Chautaquan movement was all about? In its waning days, these annual safaris by the learned seemed to visit smaller towns. They found they were welcome in Weyers Cave, Va. It became a regular site for the educational smorgasbord each year. The activities centered in and around the school building. The facilities of the school were used and large tents were erected in the area and at nearby sites around the town, for special educational productions which were really folksy lectures for the most part. I have talked with a number of residents who, for instance, told me this was their first real meeting with William Shakespeare. The visiting troupe always had a one-man Shakespearian works which used local talent to present scenes from various Shakesperian plays. The Chauauqua actors, artists and lecturers stayed with local families for the week-long visits.
The nationwide “FFA” - Future Farmers Of America started in a classroom on the first floor of this historic building. There is an historical sign a few miles south of town which attests to that historic fact.
` The add-on gym-auditorium building to the rear of the main structure was appended in the post-Depression '30's and , the Weyers Cave Ruritan Club, which met monthly in the old cafeteria-auditorium which they had helped quarry out of the basement of the old building brought about many such improvements with help from other hard-working local residents.
There was a livery stable in back of the school where the present day athletic field is located. Some students and teachers often come to school by horseback or in buggies and the riders left their mounts at the stable for day care. School buses came along in time.
The school prospered and grew to be a major influence in the area. I think it would be difficult to find a village school which had the dedicated support of local resident and civic groups anywhere. It became too large and the High School portion was moved to a new consolidated facility at Fort Defiance, Va. Within a few years the Elementary school too was moved.
The building is used today by a religious supply house which “Equip the Saints”.It has the unique purpose of funneling office supplies, furniture, computer and other such supplies to needy missionary locations around the world. There is a new church, too - just starting across the hall from the room in which the Future Farmers America first met.
Each room of the building has a history of its own it seems. It would take days to cover even a portion of the educational ventures of the youngsters who have been students within these remarkable but now “old-fashioned” walls.
I made reference to the school earlier as both “growing and dying” at the same time. Many changes have been made. I, for one, witnessed it continual growing beyond it's physical dimensions. Today it looms large in the lives of many individuals who were educated to vibrant living there.
A.L.M. January 21, 2003 (6-6-96GB) [c686wds]
