PROSPECT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL - PART 3

PROSPECT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL – PART 3

 

A friend of mine, Bruce Dzeda, was a student at Prospect Elementary School starting in 1953.  That was the year I started at Kirk Junior High School after graduating from Prospect.  It is interesting that Bruce’s kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Lowry, was also my kindergarten teacher back in 1945.  We both have fond memories of Mrs. Lowry and Prospect.  Mrs. Lowry seemed quite old when I was her student; but, after all, most adults seem old to a five year old.  She retired in 1955.

My postings about Prospect were made on October 21, 2011 and November 7, 2011 for anyone wanting to read them.  Bruce has provided much additional information about that great school and the people working there.  The combined experience of Bruce and me at Prospect covers a 15 year period from 1945 to 1960. Bruce’s memories are included below in his own words.

My Prospect Experience by Bruce Dzeda

 My schooling began at Prospect School in September, 1953 when I was enrolled in the (morning) kindergarten class of the venerable Mrs. Lowry. That was the penultimate year of her teaching career. Mrs. Lowry gave me a terrific start to my school years. If I came to school a bit early she would let me finger-paint for a while before school began.  She was encouraging. I remember we had "parades" in her kindergarten class where about 30 students would march around her classroom in a figure 8, waving little US flags as she played marches or patriotic music on her World War I era Victrola. I liked the parades then and I still do!

Mrs. Lowry had a lesson that was what we would today call inter-active: She brought some cream to school one morning (dropped off by her milk-man at her house earlier!) and we kids sat in a circle shaking small bottles of cream for all we were worth for what seemed like 20 minutes. Then she collected the several bottles of shaken cream and put them in the wooden cupboards that lined her room on the north wall.  The next morning Mrs. Lowry opened the cupboards and took out...butter! Our shaken cream had turned to butter! Thus began my entrance into the discipline of science.

Mrs. Lowry also read to us, a precious gift in those days before we could read for ourselves. She had us in rows and would read stories to us, which I loved. I remember looking around her room and seeing all the ferns she had growing in clay pots. Her kindergarten room was really a double room as it was two rooms opened up to each other.

I remember Mrs. Lowry as kind and compassionate, swift to comfort or praise a 5 year old kid. I have no photo of her and can't remember her face, but I owe that lady a lot. Her room was located in the 1910 building at Prospect. Until they demolished the building about 1980 I would revisit the place and look at the steps I as a kid would tread as I began my schooling.

Even better, in 1970 I was working as a young, fresh-out-of-college substitute teacher at Shaw High School, where earlier that year I had done my student teaching. That Fall I was assigned as a substitute to a Shaw class, I can't remember the subject, The class met in what Shaw in 1970 termed the "Prospect Annex". You may have guessed my point. For a day or two I held class in Mrs. Lowry’s room! The wheel had come full circle! I got to teach early in my career in the same room where I had attended kindergarten! I'm grateful to this day for that happy coincidence.

The next year, school year 1954-1955 saw me enrolled in Gloria Goodman's 1st grade classroom. My years at Prospect were about to become something other than the unmitigated happiness I knew under Mrs. Lowry's tutelage.

The Buildings

I loved Prospect School, not least because it struck me as so old. The two buildings, which my brother and I referred to as the Fire Trap and the Tinderbox, really weren't that old: 57 years old for the one, 43 years old for the other. In between the time the two buildings were constructed the horrific Collinwood School fire happened. Collinwood School was built in a pattern not totally dissimilar from Prospect: wooden floors and wood stairways. In Collinwood's case the furnace was directly beneath the first floor axis, a design that would prove catastrophic and deadly.

The 1910 addition to Prospect School featured concrete floors and steel and stone stairways. About this time the steam heating plant was built behind Prospect and it ended the need for a furnace in the school buildings. When the heating plant went online both Prospect and Shaw were heated by steam from a different building. Consequently both were much safer schools from a systems viewpoint. Well do I recall the coal trucks to the heating plant rumbling past Mrs. Lowry's windows bringing coal deliveries from the Board of Education's warehouse on Elderwood Avenue between Northfield & Strathmore; the Board building had its own coal trestle which was standing in 2017.

The heating plant was a brick building of two or three stories in height with a tall brick smokestack. I found it a fascinating place to look at.  It was demolished in the early 1960's after both schools were probably converted to heat by gas boilers. In the bowels of Prospect I recall seeing the cold boilers in the basement; I imagine this is the space the new gas boilers were installed.

Mike Valenti

Mike Valenti was the custodian of Prospect School when I attended. His dimly lit office or room in the basement of the 1896 building was fascinating to me, not least because there was on the wall a dramatic depiction of Paul Revere's ride.  The basement and much of the building was painted the ubiquitous school colors of light green on top, darker green on the bottom.

Mike Valenti lived in the Five Points area near Collinwood High School.  The cleaning women at Prospect were also Italians and likely from the same area.  I recall that they were friendly to me but unable to speak more than a word or two in English.  Their hangout was across the basement from Mr. Valenti's room and also the boys' toilets.  These women seemed to use industrial strength Pine Sol on the surfaces they cleaned, and I have carried the memory or that strong scent in my head ever since. Prospect School was a clean, well-maintained, safe place to go to school and I salute these non-teaching staff members who made it so.

Attached below is a newspaper clipping from The Cleveland Press saluting Prospect's Mr. Valenti at the end of his career.  I'm the boy on the right.  

  

  

As I recall, the teachers had collected pennies from us school kids and doubtless contributed money of their own.  One June afternoon in 1955 (I think) we were called out of class to assemble on the playground.  A few short remarks were made by a teacher and by Mr. Preston.  Mr. Valenti was traveling to Italy to visit his family for the first time since he had left there as a boy.  The money was a retirement gift to him for his trip.  The photographer wanted to pose Mr. Valenti with students, so some of us First Graders were shepherded forward by Mrs. Goodman.  I forget how much money was collected, but the look on our custodian's face shows his delight.  It also shows how he dressed every day for his job as a custodian...a shirt & tie!   This photo was my first appearance in a newspaper and I was proud of it.