My first memory of Center School
was when my 5th grade teacher labeled me “stupid”.
I lot interest in school right there.
The next year, with 24 pupils in one room and at age 18,
entered little “Mizdeegan”, our new teacher.
Helen Deegan was always smiling and encouraging and we
became one big family. The older students, after their
lessons in front of the room with the teacher, helped
the younger ones.
I remember coming to school in the winter and the classroom
was very cold. One of the older boys was paid to start
the furnace and it took time to heat the room. Other memories
were a bucket of water with a dipper we all used. Later
we brought our own metal cups. The “book-box”
library was a favorite. We could borrow books to take
home to read. “Heidi” was at the top of my
list.
One year, the pupils at center School raised money to
have electricity in our school on dark days and for the
plays we put on at night.
There were 10 schools in Harwinton. East Litchfield Road
had two rooms and two teachers. Lewis S. Mills was Supervisor
of Education and visited each school. He wore a brace
and lift on his left shoe due to an injury in childhood.
He had empathy for us all and we looked forward to his
coming to our school> Mr. Mills presided over the graduation
exercises at the Town Hall. Each graduating student took
part in the program and graduation was a gala event. John
Ford Peckham and Luella Marion Johnson graduated with
me from Center School on June 17, 1932 and we went on
to Torrington High School. Our quality of a one-room education
was very evident.
After retiring as Supervisor, Mr., mills contributed to
the magazine the “Lure of The Litchfield Hills”.
I will always be grateful for the stability Helen Deegan
instilled in me, but I still have qualms when I am in
large crowds, even though I have attended classes of 80
to 200 students in college and university and have taught
student dietitians and nurses on the college level with
60 to 80 students in one room.
When I went to college in Brooklyn and later matriculated
to Columbia University in New York City, I mentioned that
I received my elementary education in a one-room schoolhouse,
people thought I was joking, that one-room schools were
gone with the end of World War I. The fact is our Center
School and the other one-room Harwinton schools continued
until 1948. My aunt Hilma Keniston Fredsall was the last
teacher at Center School. In earlier years she had taught
at Fractional School.
The old center School, no on the grounds of the consolidated
school, is not the one most of us remember. It was near
Lead Mine Brook and had a Palladian-window to the roadside
and was covered with brown cedar shingles. My father,
Frank A. Fredsall, working for William McConway, did the
renovation. He left old timbers above the new ceiling
so that the room could be restored to the original. Prior
to this renovation, Dad had constructed the Agricultural
Building at the Harwinton Fairgrounds and the Theodore
Hungerford Library.
My sisters Martha and Lillian and brothers Franklyn and
Andrew Painter also graduated from Center School.
