One of a kind – Winterfield’s Grandon School

By JULIE BERRY TRAYNOR

The neighborhood country school was a mainstay of public education and social interaction for generations of children everywhere. For many of our not-so-distant ancestors, learning the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic at the neighborhood country school was the sum and total of education. In the middle of the last century, Clare County counted 85 rural, one- and two-room school districts operating within the county.

Just a few years later, when the 1961-62 school term began, only Winterfield Township’s Grandon School, the Temple School in Redding, and the Dover School in Grant Township remained. At that time, Grandon was the largest of these remaining districts. 

Grandon was a two-room, eight-grade school with an enrollment of 52 children, located on the corner of Partridge Avenue and Forest Road in southern Winterfield. The first Grandon, or the Fleming School, was built here in 1899; destroyed by fire in 1912, and a new cobblestone structure replaced it that same year. 

At the start of 1950, the Winterfield School District No. 1, serving children from the northern and central parts of the township, burned in January. It was decided that the township would purchase a bus, employ a driver and send all K-8 students to the Grandon School. A second classroom and additional bathrooms were added for the booming elementary grades. The original, or upper school, served fifth through eighth grades. High school students were transferred to a Marion bus at the county line. 

The Grandon School enjoyed a standard not afforded to many rural schools. Thanks in large part to tax dollars brought to the district by Clare County’s oil and gas boom, the basement was remodeled to accommodate a kitchen and cafeteria, and a cook was employed to cook hot meals five days a week. The school library was enlarged, and textbooks upgraded. At Grandon, students did not pay for lunches. The school district paid for books and high school tuition.

The school board was generous in granting yearly school field trips to locations such as Hartwick Pines and to the lakeshore at Frankfort. Eighth-grade students had a unique day trip before they left the school; not every eighth-grade graduate went on to high school. In the spring of 1962, grads traveled with teacher Charles Pugh, from Reed City to Grand Rapids via air. They enjoyed the sights this big city had to offer and returned home. 

The Winterfield School District remained an independent district until 1964 when residents voted to join the growing Marion School District, as did Redding Township. The Marion District used the Grandon facility for several years and, when classes ceased, the property was returned to the original owner. Both Grandon and Temple schools are private residences today. The Dover School is part of the Clare County Historical complex located on Dover Road. 

Personal note: Little did I know when I entered sixth grade at the Grandon School what a unique and fast-fading place the country school was. We had only moved eight miles, but it was enough to take us to another time. I went from a “town” school to a country school; in my mind it was the kind of school my grandma spoke of: with cloak rooms, bag lunches and outhouses. Granted, it was located on a dusty gravel road in a farmland setting, but it had none of the other attributes of the “Little House” books. Our teachers were exceptional, as was Lillian DeForest Chilcote, the cook. 

Melvin Berkompas, local dairy farmer, was the bus driver, and was likewise a gem. His gift to the children in his charge was a trip to the Lake Station Roller Rink each spring and full-sized candy bars at Halloween and Christmas: dispensed when we got off the bus, and not until. He was a wise man.

Bob Dunn was the last eighth-grade teacher at Grandon, and one of several who attended the school as a child and later taught there. Mr. Dunn went on to have a very successful teaching career with the Manton Schools. 

The late Lucille Richardson Preilipp, who was the last teacher at the Leota School (1961), and the first principal of the Clare-Gladwin Day School, was also an alum.