Wrecking ball nears, memories of AMS endure

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

AUSTINTOWN — Ah, memories. Austintown Middle School has been around since 1916, so pick out any corner in the building and you’ll probably find one there.

Don’t be disappointed if you find some unhappy ones. Naturally, with all those years taking their toll, the memories won’t all be good.

There was that time in the late 1970s when paper insulation on wiring — yes, paper — in the oldest part of the building caught fire.

Dan Bokesch, who began his teaching career at AMS in 1970 and is now its principal, was there when that happened.

Joyce Pogany, who is a school board member and president of the Austintown Historical Society, remembers a day about 15 years ago when parts of the building near the roof began to crumble and fall off.

Falling ceiling plaster

Fresh in everyone’s memories has to be last year’s near-miss: A big slab of plaster ceiling fell in the middle of a third-floor classroom. Pupils were changing classes when it happened and only three people were in the room, including a pupil who was standing near the windows, Bokesch said. Fortunately, no one was hit.

“We could have had a fatality,” Bokesch said. “So we knew we’d made the right decision.”

That decision, of course, was to build the new middle school on Raccoon Road and leave old AMS to the wrecking balls. It was made by a committee, which Pogany and Bokesch were on, that carefully considered whether it would be better to renovate historic AMS.

In the end, the panel decided the cost of making the old building safer would be higher. The building, which sits on prime real estate along Mahoning Avenue, was sold in August 2005 to Ben Post and Martin Solomon, who own the Austintown Plaza. They have not announced what they will do with the property, but the school will likely be torn down to make way for retail development.

That’s what made the decision so hard.

“There’s a lot of history here,” said Bokesch last week, while he and Pogany sifted through and admired memorabilia in his office. A marble cornerstone taken from its spot on the wall around the corner from the main office will go with Pogany to the Austin Log Cabin, where it will grace a replica of a one-room school on the museum’s second floor.

A portrait of the first school board president, Dr. J.H. Schnurrenberger, will now hang in the board of education offices.

The pictures of the graduating classes in the hallway on the first floor will be taken to Fitch High School. The AMS building served as Austintown Fitch School and Austintown Fitch High School until 1968.

“We’re taking almost nothing to the new school,” said Bokesch. Principals of the other schools have been around, putting in their memorabilia requests.

Even though Bokesch himself has a long history with the school, he does not regret leaving.

“I’m past the ‘sad’. I’m running two buildings right now,” he said, crediting buildings and grounds director Stan Watson and his assistant principal, Chris Berni, for helping him prepare for the opening of the new school. He and Berni will retain their old positions there when schools reopen this fall.

Pogany and Bokesch left his office and met up with Berni. The three of them took a short tour of the building as pupils flowed through the halls on their way to their next classes. It seemed like any other school day — the only clue to the school’s fate was the faded paint surrounding the bright spots on the walls here and there where memorabilia had been removed.

Bokesch told Pogany he was glad she was able to take one last look, though it wasn’t the first goodbye tour for AMS.

The “Final Farewell” for alumni was May 3, and Kelly Phillips, AMS PTA president, said more than 200 people took advantage of the last chance to see the school.

Almost everyone commented that its look hadn’t changed much, she said.

Memories, old and new

A memory about a water fountain on the first floor stuck with Rolayne Smith Kasmer, class of 1970. “There was this little kid who every day put a sign up — ‘An oasis in a sea of thirst,’” she said. “And every day it would be torn down.”

Rick Comek, also from the class of 1970, remembered choir sessions in the music room — near the boiler room and the men’s restroom. They kept the classroom door closed because of the noise.

Linda Schill Vuletich, class of 1966, remembers being at school when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.

“It came over the loudspeaker — he was dead,” said Pete Morabito, also from the class of ’66.

There are happy memories, too. Football games, the marching band and sock hops in the gym.

But what of the last class to leave AMS in 2007? Eighth-grader John Gora, found in the main office last week, said it’s nice to know his last year will be such an important part of community history. “I like the school,” he said.

Eighth-grader Shane Stevens, who moved to Austintown last year from western Pennsylvania, said the school became a big part of his life. He’s big into sports, he said, and he’s glad he got to be part of the last year for the traditional Frank Ohl/AMS rivalry.

No more of that. Those two middle schools will merge at the Raccoon Road building next year, where everyone will be on the same team.