FORT SILL, Okla. (June 11, 2015) -- Watching Geronimo Road Elementary School being demolished, Mikel Shanklin, the school's last principal, said the feeling was bittersweet.
"It's sad because you have so many life events, memories and friendships where you worked, but it's sweet because we are in our new building," said Shanklin, now Freedom Elementary School principal.
Shanklin invited former Geronimo staff to witness the razing of the facility June 6. A few teachers took advantage of the invitation.
Christie Gillespie, Freedom Elementary fifth-grade teacher, said her first teaching job out of East Carolina University was at Geronimo Elementary in 2012.
"I was in the first portable (building) they put out here," she said pointing to a site. "I remember loving it."
Geronimo Elementary was built in 1951, and had its first graduating class in 1952. Shanklin said the school had different names over the years. Originally, it was the Post School then became Geronimo Children's School and then Geronimo Road Elementary School.
Lawton Public Schools' Sheridan and Geronimo Road Elementary here closed in April. The schools' students transferred to the new Freedom Elementary School May 1, for the last few weeks of school.
A demolition crew of three from Harper Construction operated an excavator and bulldozer to demolish Geronimo Elementary June 6, said Les Willigar, Harper vice president of construction. He said it would take a couple days to bring down the buildings and a few more days to haul the rubble to the Fort Sill landfill. He said he expected to clear the lot by June 12, then they would dig up the foundation.
The site will be used to house the pre-kindergarten wing, the last wing, of Freedom Elementary.
Willigar retrieved a brick from the rubble as a souvenir for Gillespie. It was stamped "Ferris."
Ferris, Texas, had four brick plants operating during the 1950s, and the community became known as "The City that Bricked the World, " according to an Internet source.
Shanklin, who was also the principal at Sheridan Road Elementary School for 17 years, said some of the staff at Geronimo had spent their entire careers at the school.
Kim Harrison, Freedom Elementary special education teacher, spent 13 years at Geronimo Elementary -- first as a third-grade teacher before going into special ed.
She said Geronimo Elementary teachers, like all military school staffs, only have their students for a short time -- two or three years. At off-post elementary schools, students could very well be there for first through fifth grades.
One of the biggest changes she has seen over the years is the explosion of social media.
"Since social media, we've been able to stay in contact with children, and we've had some (military) kids that are graduating this year in Hawaii, and the Mississippi," she said.
Harrison accepted the razing.
"I think it's for the better. We definitely needed to get with the times," she said. "I see the challenges that teachers are facing to keep the students' interest. I think the new technologies that we have here (Freedom Elementary) will definitely be a plus."
Denise Rooney, Freedom Elementary pre-k teacher, has taught at Sheridan and Geronimo Road Elementary schools. She remembers the friends and memories of the schools.
"It was camaraderie, a family -- that's going to be a little bit harder to do in the big school because it's so spread out," she said.
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