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LAST-MINUTE MUSINGS: Harbison and Small: 33 years of keeping up with the Joneses
Retired local educator Alan Small got quite the introduction to Mary Emma Jones School as he was settling into his office as principal years ago.
The year was 1980, and Small was making himself at home in the office that had been occupied by predecessor Robert Harbison since 1968.
Son Jeff was there playing, when from under the desk Small heard, “Dad, what’s this?”
The youngster then produced a page from Playboy, which for those of you who don’t remember, was a tamer version of the scandalous things you can now find on the internet.
A minister after retiring from education, Small was grinning and unperturbed as he told this story on Friday just outside the shell of Jones School. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with Harbison when he added another nugget.
“Bob Harbison had put that under there just to see how long it would take the next principal to discover it,” Small said.
His hearing perhaps not what it once was, Harbison smiled and raised no objection to Small’s version of events.
The occasion for this small gathering — just two old principals and a journalist lumbering toward middle age — is the demolition of the school that stood for 69 years at the corner Liberty and Madison streets. With the temperature hovering in the 30s, it’s less than ideal, but the north hallway is already gone. It won’t be long for the gym and south hallway.
In a few more days it could be a pile of bricks ... or less.
At that point, the lot will be clear for a new Putnam County Courthouse Annex, which was also the purpose Jones served from 2001-2011.
For 47 years before that, it served as an elementary (later primary) school for Greencastle Community Schools. For 33 of those 47 years, these two men served as principal of the school.
That’s a lot of years of keeping up with the Joneses.
They shared more than a common location, though, as the two men also shared longtime school secretary Iola Miller and a common approach as building administrators.
“It was great following him. We were alike,” Small said of Harbison. “We had kind of the same philosophy. We did away with corporal punishment before the superintendent made us stop.”
I can vouch for Small’s advocacy for kids through a second-hand story I was told years ago. I have a good friend — we’ll call him “Abel” — who found himself in Small’s office on his very first day of kindergarten at Jones.
It seems that Abel wasn’t willing to share some playground equipment with another boy, which led to fisticuffs.
Later, he found himself in Small’s office (no Playboy pictures to be seen) with his mother also present.
“Now in (Abel’s) defense,” Small said, “he was using the merry-go-round first.”
“Does the merry-go-round belong to (Abel)? Does it have his name on it?” Abel’s mother, not one to suffering foolishness, countered. “Well then he should have shared it.”
I’m confident there are dozens if not hundreds of stories of that nature about both men.
But the real topic of the day was the loss of a landmark of the city’s West Side. The two men posed for a photo while crews behind them worked to remove the school name plate from next to the south entrance of the building.
On Monday morning, the Putnam County Commissioners announced their intention to donate the plate and some bricks to the Putnam County Museum.
There was plenty of recollection but not much sadness to be observed between Harbison and Small.
“It was time for it to come down,” Small said. “I didn’t see a practical way for it to be an apartment complex.”
He was referring to the proposed plan for a developer to turn the school into senior housing, much as was done to both the former Greencastle Junior High School and Miller School. In the case of Jones, built as it is into the sloping hillside north of downtown Greencastle, there would have been the matter of the main hallways being two long ramps — a less-than-optimal situation for senior housing and its inherent fall risks.
Even back around the turn of the millennium when the school was replaced, Small related that some school board members wanted to build something new on site. He saw the neighborhood, much like the ground on which it was built, going downhill at the time. There had been house fires, a syringe on the playground and even a neighbor exposing himself to a parent.
“I said, ‘Nope, you don’t want to build a new one here,’” Small recalled.
So along came Deer Meadow Primary School in a more favorable location. Already gone was the city’s old system of four neighborhood elementary schools — Jones, Ridpath, Miller and Northeast, for those keeping count — so this was yet another sign the system of the 20th century had ended.
The corporation is now served by Ridpath and Deer Meadow as primary schools (kindergarten through second grade) and Tzouanakis (formerly Northeast) Intermediate for third through fifth.
Having already become a primary principal in his final years at Jones, Small stayed on for the first year as principal at Deer Meadow before retiring from education.
“I really enjoyed that,” Small said of his years working exclusively with the corporation’s youngest students.
For his part, Harbison had moved toward older students. He actually came to GCSC in 1959 as a junior high social studies teacher before moving into administration. At one point, he was simulateously principal of Jones and Ridpath.
He later again wore multiple hats at once as both principal and athletic director at GHS. He then went on to the superintendent’s office.
Along the way he also coached football, basketball and track as well as serving as interim roles as GHS principal, GCSC superintendent and Mill Creek East principal after he had formally retired.
The older of the two men, Harbison said little during the visit, but clearly enjoyed the time reviewing his old stomping grounds.
Small summed up both men’s escapades during their time at the corner of Liberty and Madison.
“It was just a matter of making the kids like their school,” he said.
For those kids who still like their school, there is an opportunity for a memento on Tuesday. The commissioners also announced that the contractor will allow people onto the south parking lot off of Liberty to grab a brick or two.
I wouldn’t be surprise if ol’ Abel is there among them, though he may have another matter of business as well.
“Hey, Jared,” Small yelled to me as he got in his car. “Next time you see (Abel), tell him he owes me 10 minutes at recess.”
They say an elephant never forgets. Apparently neither does a principal.