Open Houses

Bob Zybach: From 1975 until the present, were there any points in time where you think the Foundation did something of particular value or had a particular problem or any events that kind of stick in your mind that you had a crisis or had a particularly successful event?

Lorna Grabe: I just found this one this morning that I thought was one of the best open houses we ever had and that was back in 1975. I guess it was one of our first ones, the second one we had in the fall and we had an alumni tea and we invited the old students and then the people from town. Very few people from town came but we had ... I think it says in the next one, we had seven old students come and of these seven old students about four or five of them were from 1900 or 1905, like Merle Moore, Myra Moore Lauridsen, and Myra had two sisters visiting here, one from the East and another sister. So we had about four of the Moores, and Charlie Olson, and then we had two others and I think. It was a rainy day in October when you'd think nobody would come, but we had a fire going in the stove and we served hot spiced tea and cookies and everybody just had a great time. So I would say that was one of the best ones.

Bob Zybach: Now this last one you had, you said there was a hundred or two hundred people at it?

Lorna Grabe: There was a huge attendance and the exhibit was antique dolls, and we've had exhibits of antique dolls before and a lady from ... this time was from Corvallis, but before we had

Lorna Grabe: an exhibit of antique dolls and the lady was from the coast. And we also had a huge attendance.

Bob Zybach: These people coming more to look at the antique dolls than they are just for the school house?

Lorna Grabe: I think this time we had a big attendance because we had a full page ... a quarter page picture in the Albany Democrat Herald, Margaret is our publicity chairman and she took she went over and asked them if they would put in an article, I guess, because we needed to raise money for our foundation, put a new foundation under our school house and would they be interested in taking some pictures. So they came out and took some pictures of she and I putting up the flag, and so they gave almost a quarter page picture with information about saying "would you like to come and relive your days in the old times and see the old desks, slates," and so a lot of the people who came were from Albany. And many of them had attended rural schools, and they come and it's so much fun to just see the expression of their faces when they come in because this school has a different feeling than any place I know. You just come in it ... because of the oak wainscoting and the windows facing the sun, and it's just a beautiful experience to come in and feel how it feels to walk into an old school house.

Bob Zybach: So the atmosphere of the school is ... part of what's selling it?

Lorna Grabe: special, yeah.