FARMINGTON — Former students and teachers at the Fairbanks School are invited to return to the rebuilt Fairbanks School Meeting House for an open house on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Members of the Fairbanks School Neighborhood Association have tried to reach out to all former students, ones that attended the school at any time, to invite them to reunite with others and see the new building, said member Cindy Kemble.
“We hope to continue this every year and our alumni committee has been charged to find former students and to create an archive memorabilia area,” she said.
The group believes the oldest living former student may be Inis (Gray) Herod who lives in Stanley, N.Y., and must be above the age of 85. They would like to hear from people who know of any living students older than that, she said.
On Saturday, there will be a memorabilia board for viewing and a time line created for students to write on the dates that they attended the school. Don DeRoche has cataloged several pictures of former students and teachers, she said.
The former two-room school house built in the late 1800s served the community until the consolidation of SAD 9 towns, Kemble said. The school was closed and most of the school materials were taken out to make room for a storage area.
The school system then gave the building back to the town of Farmington, which rented the space to Manufacturing Technical Enterprise until it burned in 1998. The rubble stood stagnant for a couple of years. In 2000, a group of interested Fairbanks neighborhood members formed with a goal to bring back a replica of the former school at the site and use it as a community meeting house while also providing space and expanding the town’s food pantry. Now they continue to work to add a commercial “shared” kitchen and make the building sustainable.
In 10 years and after much work and fundraising, the group has turned the ashes in to a beautiful building and they want the students who went there to see it, she said.
A former student, Joy (Richard) Hallee of Bangor, recently gave the school what is believed to be the original school sign. Slightly yellowed against the white of the building, the sign is posted above the door.
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