By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – To Keri Robichaud, Farwell Elementary School had a scent: part paste, part soap, part something undefined.

She left the beloved scent behind decades ago, along with little round tables and three-legged races. But on Friday night, holding her 3-year-old son’s hand, she walked into her old kindergarten classroom and back 30 years.

“Oh my God,” Robichaud said, close to tears. “I can still smell it.”

It was her last chance – the last chance of every alum – to smell, to look, to remember the school that had been such a big part of life . In a few weeks, 50-year-old Farwell will be demolished to make way for a new school. Friday marked the last open house.

“I came to say goodbye,” Robichaud said.

More than 200 people showed up to celebrate the old school on Farwell Street. Students danced in the school’s small cafeteria. Teachers chatted with parents about the upcoming move to a temporary location. Alumni wandered the halls, peering into locked classrooms and swapping tales about festivals, fountain sinks, school plays.

“We did Rip Van Winkle’ one year. I was pulled from the cast because I didn’t learn my times tables,” said Jim Handy, chairman of the Lewiston School Committee. He started at Farwell with twin sister, Janice, in 1959.

Handy’s Cub Scout pack met in the school building. He ate picnics on its front lawn and walked home for lunch with his sister every day.

“In my role in the School Committee, yeah, I knew this (demolition) was coming,” he said. “But it’s emotional.”

Down the hall, Dan Poulin, his sister and father peered into Dan’s old sixth-grade classroom. Although he’d gone to school there in the 1950s, it all looked familiar. “The classrooms seem a little smaller, though” he said.

Like Santa Claus making his list, Poulin and his sister rattled off names: Mr. Davis, nice; Mrs. Sawyer, really nice; Mr. Knapp, not so nice.

“My memory is of getting grabbed by the back of the neck by Mr. Knapp,” he said.

Others had memories of an even scarier time. “I’ll never forget the polio shots,” said Mike Poulin, no relation to Dan Poulin. “They lined us up, 5-and 6-year-olds. One by one, kids would go in the room and kids would come out crying.” He shook his head and grimaced. “I still have a phobia about needles.”

Many alumni brought their children to see the old building. Angelique Lageux Kania went to school at Farwell in the 1970s. Now living in Massachusetts, she happened to be in the area for her grandmother’s birthday when she heard about the open house. She brought her sons to see what a small, neighborhood school looked like.

“The school they go to is humongous,” she said.

Keri Robichaud brought her 3-year-old son, Nathaniel, and walked with him up and down the halls. “This is where Mama went to second grade. This is where Mama went to first grade,” she said, passing each closed door. “And this is kindergarten.”

She tried the door at the end of the hall, but it was locked.

Robichaud had moved back to her old neighborhood. If not for the demolition, Nathaniel would have learned in the very same classrooms she had. She wanted him to see what she remembered. She wanted to smell the classroom one last time.

“This is like a chapter for me,” she said.

The principal agreed to unlock the classroom. Within seconds, a group of alumni flocked to the door.

Inside, they found tiny chairs, colorful artwork, a large wooden teacher’s desk. And then there was the scent: part paste, part soap, part something undefined. They all could smell it.

Would the new school have the same scent?

“No!” they said in unison, then laughed.

The alumni agreed that a new school was needed. As grand as their memories were, the Farwell building was old and crowded. It needed repairs. The new school will be built on the same site. Students will move to a temporary space – an old school owned by the Holy Family Church – and will return in a year and a half.

Just in time for Robichaud’s son.

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