ARCHBOLD WEATHER

School Days Remembered By Last Two Members Of PHS Class Of 1935





Morris Rupp, left, and Meredith (Britsch) Beck, remaining members of the Pettisville High School Class of 1935, reminisced about their school days. When the 1929 Pettisville school building opened, the two were seventh graders. The building was torn down this summer, and a new Pettisville school opened Wednesday, Sept. 7. Be sure to see the souvenir keepsake edition on the new and modern Pettisville school facility in this week’s Archbold Buckeye.– photo by David Pugh

Morris Rupp, left, and Meredith (Britsch) Beck, remaining members of the Pettisville High School Class of 1935, reminisced about their school days. When the 1929 Pettisville school building opened, the two were seventh graders. The building was torn down this summer, and a new Pettisville school opened Wednesday, Sept. 7. Be sure to see the souvenir keepsake edition on the new and modern Pettisville school facility in this week’s Archbold Buckeye.– photo by David Pugh

The two remaining members of the Pettisville High School Class of 1935 held their 76th class reunion recently.

Out of the 20 students who received PHS diplomas that year, Meredith (Britsch) Beck and Morris Rupp are all that remain.

The two got together to talk about memories of their school days.

“In the eighth grade, we were 28. In ninth grade, 34. In tenth grade, 28. These kids would turn 16, and they would drop out of school and help on the farm or whatever,” Beck said.

“In the 11th grade, we were 21, and then Paul Porter dropped out. When we were seniors, we were 20.”

“But a powerful 20,” Rupp said. “Let’s not forget that.”

When Rupp and Beck were seventh graders, the then-new 1929 Pettisville school opened.

Prior to the opening of the school, students living in rural areas attended small, often one-room schools.

Rupp said up until sixth grade, he attended the Doll School. “One room, first through eighth grades.”

In 1928 or ‘29, county level school officials redrew school district boundry lines, “and we started going to the big school in Pettisville,” Rupp said.

There was a school in Pettisville at that time, a twostory, wood-frame building that was less than a block away from the 1929 building.

“One through four was downstairs, and five through eight was upstairs,” Rupp said.

“It had iron (hand) rails, and about four or five steps to get up to the first floor.

“Occasionally, somebody would challenge some kid in the fall, when we had the first frost, to taste the frost, and he couldn’t get loose. The teacher had to come out with some water to release the child. That really happened,” Rupp said.

When the 1929 building opened, Rupp said the students were excited.

“Sure we were excited. We were mostly country kids, and to get into the big city and a big building, why wouldn’t we have been excited?” School Days

When she was a child, school started at 9 am and students were released at 4 pm, Beck said.

Today, school at Pettisville starts at 8:20 am; students are dismissed at 3:05 pm.

Beck said the first five grades were downstairs.

“Sixth grade was at the top of the stairs, then seventh and eighth, and then on around the corner. Later, fifth and sixth grades were downstairs,” she said.

Among the teachers was Miss (Flora) Dimke.

“She taught fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth. We had her for fifth and sixth.

“This lady never married. She had a sister, Amelia, who stayed home and did the work, and Flora taught school for many, many, many years.

“Every morning, we’d have to do our exercises. Then we’d be done with that, and she taught us a psalm. She taught us the first psalm, the 23rd, the 121st, and a couple more. She was very diligent,” she said.

Rupp remembers J.J. Rychener, Pettisville’s first superintendent, who taught history.

“He would always (say), ‘Get your pad out, go from one to 10.’ He had 10 questions to answer, and you didn’t know, you never knew when he would say, ‘this is your test today.’”

Rychener also supervised a study hall.

“That guy was so slippery, you never knew when he was in there or when he wasn’t. It was the quietest of all the study halls, because if you turned around to see where he was, he would let you know. So everybody was afraid to turn their head to see where the fox was.

“He might be in there, and you could hear when he left the room, see? On occasion, he would go and open the door and close it, but he didn’t leave!”

Beck said she had English under Miss Wyse.

“She was a tough cookie,” Rupp said.

“But she was a good teacher.

You learned from her,” Beck said.

“She kept order. No shenanigans. That’s why all the kids did extremely well at Pettisville,” Rupp said. Sports

Pettisville didn’t start to play basketball against other schools until the 1929 building opened.

The first few years, the principal, Stewart Gottschall, doubled as coach. Later, A.C. Robbins, a Purdue University graduate, came along.

“He was the first guy in basketball to teach the fast break. When they (other teams) came to play Pettisville, he did the fast break, and he was very successful for two or three years,” Rupp said.

In fact, Robbins convinced the team from Toledo Waite High School to come play PHS.

“Pettisville just happened to have some big guys… Floyd Smith, Tom Rychener, Jim Zehr. As I remember, those guys beat the Waite team,” Rupp said.

Rupp said as a student, he remembers singing “America the Beautiful.”

“I get tears in my eyes when I sing it, because of where we are today, compared to where we were then.”


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