The
year was 1913. There was no electricity, travel was by foot or by horse
and wagon, and the first school in the Waller Road area — a one-room
structure named Woodrow School — opened to 14 students.
The
original schoolhouse, named after President Woodrow Wilson and its
location in the woods, will be open to the community during Waller Road
Elementary School’s 100th anniversary celebration.
Guest
speakers and student music performances will kick off the celebration
at 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 31 at the school’s covered play shed. A
catered spaghetti dinner will be served at 4:45 p.m., and guests will be
invited to walk through the school and see historical displays and a
photo slideshow. Dinner tickets are available through May 9 for $5 each
and can be purchased by cash or check at the school, located at 6312
Waller Road in Tacoma.
The
community is also invited during the open house to cross 64th Street on
the south side of the school to visit the original one-room Woodrow
School, located adjacent the Waller Road Grange Hall. Children will be
invited to take photos in pioneer clothing and play turn-of-the-century
games.
The
historic Woodrow School was a simple one-room building with a small
closet, an outhouse, and a yard full of trees. Community members Ed and
Edna Eichorn used the small building for storage on their property
across the road from the current elementary school and offered it as a
schoolhouse in 1913 while a more permanent structure was built.
The
school was moved to the Waller Road Grange and renovated by Grange and
community members as part of a 1976 Bicentennial project. It is
designated as a State Historical Building of Interest. Woodrow School
was renamed Waller Road School in 1936 after a three-room brick building
was built at the school’s current location. That brick building forms
the center section of the present-day school.
Woodrow
School is filled with artifacts, some of them original to when it
opened. Hardwood desks and seats line narrow walkways, a small world
globe and pair of spectacles rest on a small teacher’s desk near the
window, a lantern hangs from the ceiling for light, and an oil-skin
blackboard and wood stove greet visitors inside the doorway. A metal
lunch pail marked “Rudy” sits alongside worn and weathered books on the
bottom shelf of a bookcase. The pail is a replica of one used by the
late Rudy Geise, one of the first children to attend the school in 1913.
His four children, three grandchildren, and great-grandson, currently a
sixth grader, make up four generations of Waller Road Elementary
students.
Each
spring, the school’s third graders spend one day at Woodrow School
experiencing what life was like for Geise and other pioneer children.
Girls don skirts and bonnets, and boys wear cloth caps as they churn
butter, make ice cream, saw logs, push barrel hoops with sticks,
practice penmanship with pens dipped into ink wells, and learn about
school rules in 1913.
For
more information about the anniversary celebration, contact the school
at (253) 841-8745 or visit the Waller Road Elementary’s 100th Year
Celebration Facebook page. Special thanks all who contributed to this
article and photo display, including those who worked on the
publication, “Woodrow School, The Heart of Waller Road,” published by
Puyallup Public Schools in 1989. The booklet was written by Beverly Ann
Marshall with research and editing by Phyllis Dorwin, Diane Fogle, and
Janice Morgan.