Foundation Events

Lorna Grabe: out and showed spinning and weaving. And she just is a very knowledgeable person. And wild flowers.

Bob Zybach: So she's been more involved from the aspect of putting on displays and assisting the Foundation rather than as a member?

Lorna Grabe: Right. She was a member, we made ... well, the group (end of side of tape)

Bob Zybach: The School House Foundation started in '67, by '69 the electricity in, they opened up to the public and they had a meeting and you moved here in what year?

Lorna Grabe: In '68.

Bob Zybach: Okay. And when did you become interested in this School House Foundation?

Lorna Grabe: I started my work in 1974, but the Foundation functioned for about 2 or 3 years with open houses ... like they would be open on weekends during the summer and then in the fall they would have ... in the scrap book it said they had like bake sale, they'd have a white elephant sale like in December. And then after about two or three years, the attendance just dropped ... at the open houses

Bob Zybach: Talking about the first two years of pretty good attendance and then it started falling off.

Lorna Grabe: Then as attendance fell off and some of the people moved away, and I think some of the open houses, one of the last

Lorna Grabe: couple that I remember that didn't work very well, is Bessie tried to have an antique sale and almost nobody came and another time she tried to have a circus. I mean these things are really kind of far removed from the historic site thing, and so people just didn't come and at that time this was considered a long ways from town. It's like as if now you moved thirty miles from town, ten miles then was considered really quite a long way.

Bob Zybach: So in the functions they had in the '60's when they were first trying to get things going, then those were pretty well attended?

Lorna Grabe: Yeah, I guess so, I mean they ... they'd maybe get twenty- five people ... maybe that was considered ... that was considered pretty good attendance.

Bob Zybach: So then how many people came to the antique show?

Lorna Grabe: I think there was just a couple people came; I don't think there was very many, but anyway they just kind of gave up. And then also some people that had been in the Foundation moved away and I think Bessie Nordahl's mother, Pearl Bacon, moved away and then Bessie and her husband moved up to near Monmouth, moved out of the neighborhood. And at that time there was a 4-H group that had horses in the neighborhood, and so when the Foundation disintegrated, this horse group started to meet at the school house, and our kids were in this horse club. They met there just a few times for about two years and they ... during those years from about '71 and

Lorna Grabe: '72, the horse club put new shingles on the school house and repainted it. So they really kept it up even though their main focus wasn't historical exhibits like it is now.

Bob Zybach: It came from being an abandoned building to being restored because of Bacons and Nordahls and then Bessie Murphy was active then, and they tried to have events and kind of went through an area of failure, and then this horse club came in ... kept the building up, but had nothing to do with the school house other than it was a structure?

Lorna Grabe: I don't ... no, they didn't have any open houses or anything, but they kept paying the taxes because the building ... the Foundation leased the building from the North Corvallis Farmer's Union. And they had to pay the taxes each year and the taxes amounted from about $38 to $51 a year. And that was a lot of money, so any money that they made from bake sales, almost all of it went to taxes, so they didn't have much left over to buy furnishings, but in the mean time, these newspaper articles say that they were encouraging people to make donations of school bells or textbooks and desks, and they were starting to collect things already then.

Bob Zybach: So there was some interest in historical aspects of the ... when did people start moving back in the valley after World War II?

Lorna Grabe: That's before my time, I don't know ... I don't know about that era.

Bob Zybach: Would Audrey Brenneman down the road be a good person to talk to about those years?

Lorna Grabe: Probably, yes, I think they would.

Bob Zybach: okay, so when you moved here about dozen families and some interest in preserving the school house, how many other old buildings were here at that time that aren't here anymore? Not counting the Glender home?

Lorna Grabe: Yeah, the Glender house, okay. The real old house, Robsons lived in that real old house that's down there off the right by the beef farm now.

Bob Zybach: That they call the stage coach house now?

Lorna Grabe: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And the Robsons lived there?

Lorna Grabe: Yeah, Stan Robson, he's on the ... with the police department now ... sheriff's department. He lived in that old house, and then another what I would consider a really visual historic building was an old barn that is down where Dailys are now. That was there just ... just fell down about five years ago. It was just gorgeous, beautiful barn.

Bob Zybach: Was there any effort to save that by the people that were trying to save the school house?

Lorna Grabe: No, our ... we rented that barn for our horses for about five years, the Dailys ... that was the Dailys property, and they