As I mentioned last week, my curiosity was piqued by Proposition 2 and the history of the Ridgeway School district, so I did some searching on Newspapers.com. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Ridgeway school fire of 1951. That two-story school was built in 1901 and an addition built in 1938 included a gym and auditorium. Early in the morning of Friday, September 14, a fire started in a basement furnace and despite the efforts of firefighters from Ridgeway, Bethany and Eagleville, the fire gutted the building leaving the community without a school for its 215 students.
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Ridgeway Public School
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An article written by Fred Fitzsimmons in the Sunday, November 4, 1951 edition of the Kansas City Star detailed the fire and the aftermath. Within a week, all the students were back in class. Businesses up and down Main Street provided classroom space for high school classes, Eagleville donated desks and other equipment, and a public address system told students when to change to their next class. The grade school students were taught in the Christian Church and my mother-in-law remembers her eighth grade class met in the church basement. The town voted overwhelmingly for a bond issue and levy which raised $237,000 (nearly $2.4 million in today’s money) to rebuild the school. They hired architects, solicited bids, and started building. Though the 1952-1953 school year opened two weeks late due to supply issues, Ridgeway’s students started that year in a brand-new building on September 18, 1952, just one year and 4 days after the fire.
Meanwhile, the Lions Club was working to provide the school with a field house. They secured a military surplus building at low cost and many volunteers took time away from their own farms and businesses to make multiple trips (235 miles one way) to Camp Ellis, IL, to bring the building back on trucks and rebuild it. Other volunteers spent days under a canvas tent cleaning bricks from the burnt-out building. The bricks were used as a facing on the new field house and as part of a chimney. Many people worked past midnight the last three weeks to complete the building in time for the first basketball tournament in the new gym. Thanks to all the hard work and spirit of cooperation, Ridgeway had a new school and a new field house.
Mr. Fitzsimmons seemed to admire how Ridgeway’s people pulled together to educate its students and build for the future. He quoted school superintendent Charles A. Thompson as saying “’This is sure by far the worst thing that ever happened in Ridgeway … But no one was injured in the fire. We think we were lucky.” Mr. Fitzsimmons ended the article by saying “Luck may have played a part. But, by and large, the good school situation has resulted from tiny Ridgeway’s initiative in rising above its w
