Bitter School Bond Issues Passed for a New High School in 1953.

Photo shows gathering of School Board Members, Trustees, and County Commissioners as they broke ground for new school buildings in 1953. Left to right, County Commissioner Ernest A. Bell, Sr., School Trustee Tom Gowen, Trustee Shelton M. Howard, County Commissioner Alton Carter, County Clerk John Harris, Board Member J. P. Conner, Trustee J. Malcolm Wade, Trustee Theo Dinkins, School Board Member Frank Conner, School Board Chairman (with shovel) J. V. Gowen, Sr., School Superintendent William S. Smith, School Board Member Alfred Thrift, School Board Member Austin Gay, and School Trustee, Woodrow Pickren. All are now deceased except Alton Carter,

It had been a hard fight, but Charlton County was to get a new high school and gymnasium. County voters had approved a bond issue for the two new structures to replace a building in use since the turn of the early 1900s.

The old building, standing on the corner of Folkston's Third Street and Kingsland Drive had seen better days, but now it was barely serviceable, plaster fell from the walls, the stairs leading to the second story creaked and threatened to fall with every passing day.

Tacked onto the old high school building was a "cracker box" gymnasium, built in the 1930s with WPA funds during the nation's economic depression, to stimulate payroll, not primarily to provide a place for playing basketball.

Standing on the grounds where the new buildings were to be built, in 1953, was School Superintendent William Shock Smith, a native of West Virginia, with a pleasing personality who was elected School Superintendent in a bitter political contest in 1943 with the incumbent, John Harris, who had held the job since 1924.

Smith marched to a different drummer. He wanted better school facilities. The old days of "we'll make these do" were gone. To Harris, athletics had been something he had to put up with in his day. Smith saw athletics as a way to develop the body and mind of his young students. The students liked the change.

Under Harris, the high school basketball teams played 8 to 10 games a year, mostly with next-door teams like Hilliard, Yulee, Nahunta, and Saint George. The high school had no football team.

Smith put in to change all this. He pushed for a complete athletic schedule for the high school. In 1947, he talked the Folkston Lions Club into buying uniforms for the county's first football team, and hired a tennis professional, Art Prochaski, as the Indians' first football coach. Another West Virginian soon replaced Prochaski, C. L. (Bud) Williams,

Not satisfied with the rundown school building in the county, Smith talked his School Board into offering a bond issue to build a modern new high school building and a new gymnasium. The gym was to cost $80,000 dollars. Smith and the School Board were vilified for offering such a suggestion; nevertheless, the voters did approve the measures.

Smith had done the nearly impossible. Now he, the School Board and Board of Trustees would break ground for the new buildings. It was 1953.

You could see the look of pride on the faces of the men as they gathered around Board Chairman J. V. Gowen, Sr., Chairman of the Board, who would turn the first shovel of dirt. The road had been long and bitter. Opponents to the bond issue had pulled out all stops to defeat the measure, including some personally boycotting business leaders who spoke out in favor of the bonds.

At that groundbreaking, aging John Harris, then Clerk of the Board of County Commissioners shared the spotlight. Harris was in the midst of planning the Charlton County Centennial, which was coming up in February of 1954. The long-time former School Superintendent had first come into the county in 1904, settling in Saint George from Cuba Missouri. There he published a newspaper and headed up that community's drive for new schools. Now Harris looked on proudly at his successor in the School Superintendent's office, Bill Smith. The two were cordial, but never close during Smith's 20-year reign as School Superintendent. Harris took his political defeat by Smith hard. Some teachers, loyal to Harris, resigned rather than work for a new Superintendent. Political graves popped up on the front lawn of the county courthouse. That was ten years earlier than the groundbreaking for the new high school and gym. Smith always went out of his way to be warm and polite to Harris, but Harris never returned the warmth.

Nevertheless, the miracle was the passing of those school bonds. Old political wounds were reopened; however, Smith had a special talent for winning over his former adversaries. That trait served Smith well in several county elections during his terms of office. He served twenty years before losing in a close election to D. Ray James, a then Folkston High School Principal.

That day in 1953 when the group gathered for the symbolic groundbreaking ceremonies, any rancor that may have existed among the participants was covered up. It was a scene of unanimous joy, the School Board Members, County Commissioners, School Trustees and Smith gathered around Chairman Jim Gowen as he pitched his shovel into the ground. All was forgiven in past political struggles, now the men there would move on to other missions for the public good.

Today those buildings, opened in 1954, which later became the Folkston Middle School, are abandoned. Quarters that are more modern became available. The old $80,000 gym is still used, but the classrooms, lunchroom and library sit vacant, threatening to join other abandoned county school buildings in the town that remained standing as time passed them by.