NIU’s One-Room Schoolhouse banquet
will screen Resource Bank documentary

by Mark McGowan

“One Room One People,” a half-hour documentary on the history of one-room schools in DeKalb County, will be screened during a June 11 banquet to raise money in support of NIU’s One-Room Schoolhouse.

Resource Bank funded the documentary, which attracted 1,200 people to the Egyptian Theatre last December for its public premiere, as a gift to the communities of DeKalb County. Sycamore-based Morning Star Media Group produced the film.

The banquet and cash bar - from 6 to 11 p.m. in the Regency Room of the Holmes Student Center - will include a silent auction, featuring such items as African art, antiques, a camping weekend, a ride in an antique airplane, a quilt and four tickets for a 2004 Huskies football game.

Tickets are $50 per person, or $400 per table. For more information, or to make a reservation, call (815) 753-1561.

“The inspiration for the documentary was a need to be able to present to our bank and trust clients, and people in the area, something that would honor those people who built DeKalb County, and that's really what this documentary does,” said Mary Keys, director of marketing for Resource Bank.

“We're a strong economy, and a strong county as a group of people, and how did that happen? It's because of that focus on the need for education,” Keys added, “and that focus began early in the mid-1800s, when the county was being settled, and all the way into the 1950s, with the one-room schoolhouse.”

DeKalb County once was home to more than 200 one-room schoolhouses, each of which was only a couple miles from the next, giving true meaning to the term “neighborhood school.” The last closed in the late 1950s.

Keys paid a visit to county historian Phyllis Kelley, at the Sycamore Public Library’s Joiner History Room, where she found 27 baskets of local black-and-white photographs of everything from roads and street scenes to churches and one-room schools. The photos told a story, she knew, but a documentary would mean more.

The bank then ran a one-time ad in the newspaper inviting people with stories or artifacts from one-room schools to come forward.

“We had over 80 people,” Keys said. “We heard all their stories, and every story was different. This was an important part of their lives.”

Speakers in the film include some teachers, who talk of picking up children in their Plymouths on cold, snowy days, of making sure that the fire was hot and stoked, and that the water cooler was filled and fresh. Students talk about the games they played, the friends they made and the balance between books and farm chores.

Viewers are left with two striking images.

First, all of the alumni speak glowingly of how the wide range of ages in the classroom enriched their learning. Kindergartners were exposed to lessons meant for eighth-graders, and every level in between, while older students enjoyed constant “refresher courses” as the younger children studied. Meanwhile, older students naturally took on the responsibility of nurturing their smaller classmates.

Second, the former students reflect on a bygone chapter in rural America history, when children were shielded from the worries of the world as they grew up in simple happiness. One woman tells of how blessed she feels today that her Depression-era parents never told her how tough the times were. Another man reveals that he never realized his family was poor until he left the comfort of the one-room schoolhouse for high school.

NIU, which cooperated in the production of the video by giving the filmmakers access to the One-Room Schoolhouse on campus and the vast archives of the Blackwell Museum, will honor Resource Bank (and the DeKalb County Farm Bureau) during the June 11 banquet. The bank donated copies of the documentary to all DeKalb County libraries, schools, historical societies and museums.

Keys, meanwhile, encourages everyone to visit the One-Room Schoolhouse.

“For the people who relate from the standpoint of attending a one-room school, it takes them back to a time that was so important to them,” Keys said. “For the students who have an opportunity to go there, it shows that the foundation of education came from a simple means during a very simple time, as well as how important education was then and how important it is now.”

DVD and VHS copies of “One Room One People” are available for purchase at any Resource Bank location. Call (815) 756-6321 for more information.

6-1-04