By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Five members of Dowagiac's Class of 1936 reunited for lunch Thursday noon at Round Oak Restaurant 70 years after their graduation in the auditorium of what was then a 10-year-old building.
Their reminiscing revolved around recalling their teachers.
The building itself, which will be demolished this month as part of a $5 million redevelopment as a medical arts facility and senior housing, stirred few fond memories.
"I enjoyed my years in school," said Shirley Palmer. "But I think (Central) has outlived its usefulness. I think it's time it came down. It's ugly in its present state. I'm glad some of it is being preserved."
Richard Sifford is inclined to agree, and consider his particular perspective.
Not only did he serve as school board president during eight years on the Board of Education in the 1970s, but the retired mail carrier looks at Central every day from his home across Main Street by Borgess-Lee Memorial Hospital.
"I don't have any emotions about it," Sifford said. "The site construction man told me today they were not going to sell bricks, that they're going to grind them, because I wanted to bring some today."
Sifford said proms took place in the gymnasium. There were dances after school on Friday afternoons and Saturday night youth dances in the summer.
Varsity basketball games were played there, but then, as now, the football gridiron was up Spruce Street at today's Chris Taylor-Alumni Field.
"We had to dress in the locker room under the gym, then run down to Alumni Field and run back," said Sifford, who later refereed basketball games at Central.
One of the hospital's major benefactors, Leo Krziza, presented his classmates with series plates commemorating Central.
"My dad helped work on that school," recalled Lucille Leiber (Burge) of Niles. "When they tore the old one down before that, he brought home great big sheets of slate for us kids to write on."
"I married a Niles boy," she said. "I started going with him when I was a freshman in high school and he was a senior. That was quite a deal, to go with a fellow out of town," she laughed.
Her class gets together every five years. Sifford estimated 70 from the 122-member class are deceased.
The class attended Central beginning with seventh grade, after the old Oak Street School.
Union High, which opened in the fall of 1961, is Dowagiac's fifth high school.
Dowagiac's first class should have graduated in 1860, but was hampered by an 1859 fire which burned the school to the ground one Friday night.
Students were scattered in buildings throughout town, with high school in the old ReShore building, which later burned, too, and the intermediate department in a cooper shop.
A new brick school opened in 1861, with two wings added in the 1880s.
Dowagiac's third high school opened in 1904 on the site of Justus Gage and became Oak Street School when Central opened in 1926.
At a nearby table, Class of 1936 nostalgia attracted the attention of visitors from Iowa and Kansas here for The Antique Stove Association's national convention.
Stovers Dean and Christy Hron of Cresco, Iowa, and Roger and Teresa Havel of Atwood, Kan., where he farms wheat, were getting a bite to eat and trying to learn what Round Oak Stove creator Philo D. Beckwith's middle name was.
They were enthralled to meet Dean Pollins, who could share his wealth of personal memories of working in the office at Round Oak from 1937 to 1940, following in the footsteps of his dad, who had been a molder since 1929.
For example, Pollins related, "In Washington and Oregon, particularly, we would get enough stoves, furnaces and ranges to fill a boxcar load. We sent them from here to Baltimore by ship through the Panama Canal and up the West Coast. That was a long journey of months, but transportation on water at that time was so much cheaper" than overland by rail.
Dean's wife of five years, Pat, is originally from New Jersey. They met in Florida. They bought a home in Mishawaka in May. Pollins previously resided at Finch Lake, near Marcellus.
Hron specializes in reproduction "cans" for Round Oak Stoves. After lunch they headed out to Dowagiac Conservation Club to set up for this weekend's national gathering.
"I don't consider myself an antique dealer," Havel stated. "I'm a stover. I do restorations for other people to support my 'disease.' I'd like to open my own shop."
The last time they converged on Dowagiac was Aug. 19-21, 1994, when their host was the late Harold Primley. That convention convened downtown.
The first gathering was May 9, 1984, with 17 collectors in Sturbridge, Mass. Dearborn hosted the 1985 event.
Other conventions have taken place in St. Louis, Maine, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Ohio, California, Rhode Island and Peekskill, N.Y.
Those who have attended numerous times collect detailed metal pins commemorating each location. It seems like every vehicle contains a copy of Leland Haines' Round Oak book, which is their "Bible."
Hron makes news wherever he goes, like a paper in Czechoslovakia profiling the "Americans."
Like a rock-and-roll roadie, he unloads and reassembles a Style R Chief circa 1905. The collectors joke that they should strive to be faster, like a NASCAR pit crew.
A crowd of collectors gathers to ogle the ornate range, since it's complete with a swing-out towel bar.
A plain black stove next to it is visually non-descript, except that it looks like new but was made in Dowagiac in 1871 – so it's home from Hron's home in Iowa after a 135-year absence.
Seeing a "Holy Grail" of stove collecting made many hearts grow fonder.