End of an era as Gladys school closes

Gladys Elementary School students walked out of their school for the last time Wednesday.

Next year, they’ll have the opportunity to continue learning at Brookneal Elementary and to make new friends.

Still, for Gladys community residents such as Ted Vassar, the loss of the school stings. Five generations of Vassar’s family attended the school, from his great-grandmother to his children. Now, for the first time in more than 100 years, a Gladys education is not an option for the next generation.

The last day of school for Campbell County students Wednesday marked the last day for Gladys. The closure is the result of budget cutbacks in the school division, which also eliminated about 68 teaching and certified staff positions throughout the county, along with other reductions.

“It’s a pretty hard pill to swallow,” said Vassar, 60, who still has the “Clean Plate Club” pin he earned as a student half a century or so ago. “I took a lot of pride in the history.”

Schools in Gladys date back further than Gladys itself. Before the community bore the name Gladys, it was called Pigeon Run, for the now-extinct passenger pigeons that used to flock to the spot. A man named Colonel Robert Withers attended school in Pigeon Run sometime between 1825 and 1850 and wrote about the experience in his autobiography, according to Mary Etta Brandt’s 1941 “ A Historical Study of Education in Campbell County.”

In 1890, a new school was built in Gladys, near the site of an old one-room log cabin schoolhouse, following the beginning of Virginia’s official mandatory public education system in 1870. Vassar’s family believes his great-grandmother Rosa Oakes attended that school. Though he doesn’t have the records to prove her attendance, he said she grew up half a mile away.

He’s sure his grandmother, Kathleen Vassar, graduated from the school in 1914 — Vassar even has the program. Then his parents, Fred and Aurelia, graduated in the late 1930s, when classes included high school students.

Over time, the school and its population changed as boundaries shifted and the school division desegregated. While the school at one point held students of all grade levels, gradually the older grades were sent to what became William Campbell Combined School, leaving only younger students in Gladys.

From his own days at the school, 1956 to 1963, Vassar remembers weekly time for singing — tunes like “God Bless America” and “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia.”

“It’s funny,” said Vassar, who later went on to study music in college. “It’s affected so many parts of our lives.”

Vassar’s son Ryan, now 21, attended the school during the 1990s and has fond memories, too — even of eating in the cafeteria.

“The food was always really good there, every day,” Ryan Vassar said. “Even breakfast was good.”

Campbell County Supervisor Hugh Rosser, who is 83, attended the school himself for one year in the first grade more than 70 years ago, before the family discovered they were just over the Naruna district boundary line. What he remembers most was how area residents stood behind the school.

For example, the Gladys PTA bought land for the playgrounds and chipped in to build agriculture and home economics buildings, which later burned down in a fire, according to school records.

“Gladys has always been a very tight-knitted community, always helping each other,” Rosser said. “They always supported the school — whatever it took to run it.”

As for Ted Vassar, he thinks losing the school could hit Gladys hard. Still, he wants to write a book one day, titled, “Where Heaven Touched the Earth: Gladys, Virginia.”

“No place could touch this community,” he said, “as far as what it offers.”