Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Monday, July 14, 2008

  Linlee Elementary School originally was a country school set back off the old Georgetown Road, near the county line. Now the interstate is within sight.

  But the creep of the city limits hasn’t changed the small-town feel many people say it’s always had. The school still is comfortable, they say, like home.

  “Even now it’s a lot like a family,” said Donna Carrithers, who is retiring this year.

  Carrithers, who has taught 12 years at Linlee, recalled that the school used to be way out of town before urban sprawl caught up.

  “It was a little country school where you could hear the cows. At one point, we would find deer on the playground and have to lead them back across the road to the wooded area,” she said. “It was neat that we were a small, country school for so long.”

  Jan Meade, who has taught at Linlee for about 25 years, occasionally runs into former students around town who feel the same way.

  “The students always mention that they felt loved at Linlee and cared about and that teachers were really interested in them as a person,” she said. “They felt like their teachers were some of their very best friends.”

  Linlee is closing its doors this spring after 97 years. The old building, which is too small to meet the population needs, will be replaced by the $17.5 million Sandersville Elementary School.

  Former student Fay Halfhill kept mementoes from when she attended Linlee in the 1940s and recently put them together in a scrapbook.

  She has a May Day program from the year her brother was crown bearer, a photo of the eighth-grade class of 1947, a newspaper clipping about seventh-graders winning first prize in a DAR contest and “a few pictures of kids I knew when I went there.”

  Halfhill also has her own memories, including one somber occasion.

  “I was going to that school during the time Roosevelt was president,” she said. “Another girl and I were responsible for getting the flag up. When he passed away, I put the flag at half-staff.”

  Then there was the time some boys threw rocks at beehives in a backyard near the school. “Two of them got in my hair and stung me right in the top of my heard,” she said.

  Meade said she taught her share of mischievous kids.

  “I’ve always found that a lot of those little boys, if you challenge them and channel them in the right direction, they turn out to be some of your best students,” she said.

  One, for instance, was particularly “ornery.” But Meade reached out to him through his love of animals, setting up a hamster cage in her classroom. The boy would stay after school to care for the hamster, and Meade would take him home – using the opportunity to talk with his mother about his schoolwork.

  “Sometimes it’s just something simple like that, to get them involved,” she said of the responsibility. “That’s what really turned him around.”

  Another time, a child’s book bag was moving suspiciously. Meade took it into an empty classroom and slowly unzipped it, first seeing two bright eyes. It turned out that a boy had brought a neighbor’s mother cat and two kittens to school.

  “That’s just the way things go when you’re teaching,” Meade said.

CLOSING FESTIVITIES
Linlee Elementary, 2545 Georgetown Road
3 to 5 p.m. Sunday May 18: Linlee’s open house will feature memorabilia, a quilt auction, commemorative cookbook sale and tours. Tickets for food and kids’ activities are $1. Cake and punch will be served in the gym. The program, which starts at 4:30 p.m., will include remarks by Principal Sandy Mefford and recognition of past principals and teachers. Superintendent Stu Silberman and board chairman Larry Conner also will speak.
5 to 7 p.m. Thursday May 29: Self-guided tours of the building start at 5 p.m., and performances by the school band and orchestra will be at 6 p.m. The musical drama “American Pop” will feature the Linlee chorus. Admission is $5, with proceeds benefiting the arts and humanities program. Participants can bring dinner or buy dinner from the school for $8 each; call (859) 381-3507 for reservations.
Contact: Sandy Mefford, (859) 381-3507.