Memories of Aylesworth Elementary School in Portage and its earlier iteration as a junior high poured out during Tuesday’s farewell tour.
The school is set to be razed this summer to make way for the new Aylesworth Middle School that will replace Willowcreek Middle School next door. It will be the first new school building for Portage Township Schools since the high school opened in 1979.
Ken Untch, who attended junior high there from 1966 to 1968, remembers watching from the second-floor windows as snow fell during the 1967 blizzard. “I couldn’t believe there was so much snow.”
“I walked to school from over where Dairy Queen is, on Central Avenue,” Untch said. “Anything under a mile, everyone walked.”
That was the blizzard by which all future blizzards would be measured. “I spent a lot of days at home then,” he said, back in the era when closing school for snow days was rare.
Untch hadn’t seen the gym yet during Tuesday’s tour, but he was looking forward to it.
It had a popcorn ceiling with ball marks from kids throwing balls high and hitting the ceiling. Metal guards around speakers were dented. “When my son was still here practicing, they were still here,” Untch said.
He remembers wrestling in the cafeteria during gym class. Junior high was when gym class exposed students to a variety of sports. “They get you to do everything to see if you have a talent.”
“I remember coming here. It was a big change from grade school,” Untch said. For one, you needed to know your locker combination. “It was a little frightening in the beginning.”
Then there was government class, in which there was supposed to be a three-way debate, three parties.
“For some reason, I got chosen to debate somebody, and I am really shy. We went into the gym, and the gym was full. I was supposed to have a speech, and I just said, ‘Go and vote for me.’ The teacher got me into that one,” he said.
Carol (McCormick) Untch was a student at the school a few years later. Sam Wells was her first big crush. “I’ll never forget him,” she said, with his blonde hair and blue eyes. “What else is there?”
Ken also remembered the art teacher wanting to strip the paint off a table, so the students did it for her.
Carrie Biggs, a reading resource Title 1 teacher in her 30th year, has been at Aylesworth the whole time. “I never thought 30 years later, I’d still be here.” With the demise of the school, she is transferring to Jones Elementary.
“My memories are beyond the walls here,” Biggs said as she stood in a classroom with old school yearbooks and photos.
Superintendent Amanda Alaniz popped into the room. Biggs gave her a group photo she had saved, hoping Alaniz would show up. “She was my dance team coach in high school,” Alaniz said, beaming at the photo of Alaniz and her teammates.
“It’s going to sound cliché, but it’s the teachers who have become lifelong friends” that Biggs leaves the school with. She still keeps in touch with students, their families and retired teachers.
That’s not to say she doesn’t have memories of events at the school.
“We’ve had a bat in the building,” Biggs said. “He got up in the rafters, and they found him somewhere, I think it was in one of the fifth-grade rooms.” The school district had to bring in experts to remove the bat.
Biggs also fondly recalls the fashion show with teachers dressed up as different skills for the ISTEP standardized tests. “We had three men dressed up as ladies. They were called the ISTEP ladies,” Biggs said. The late Superintendent Ric Frataccia was one of the “ladies.”
In the corner of the room, Biggs noted, was a portrait of Wallace Aylesworth, for whom the school was named, sitting on his desk. “The kids made it a toy, so we had to put it away,” she said. The portrait will be moved to the new middle school, also named in his honor, when the school is built.
Mandy Rose, of Valparaiso, described her K-5 experience at Aylesworth as a “magical” experience.
“Probably some of my best memories” are from the school, she said.
Rose, a photographer, remains friends with her art teacher, Nancy Witt, on Facebook. “I would say she was one of my biggest influences here.”
Mr. Ingram, the principal at the time, would give kids a school pencil on their birthday.
A recess aide, Jerry, used to give little whistles as prizes.
“I had won the fun fair naming contest,” Pets on Parade, one year, Rose said.
“I did comical things. I came to school with a neck brace on,” she said, and told people she had been in an accident. The teachers, who knew better, went along with it.
But it wasn’t all fun.
“The library is where I saw the Challenger explosion. I remember right where I was,” she said, sitting on the floor, legs crossed, as she watched the space shuttle explode on live television.
Among the seven crew members was Christa McAuliffe, selected by NASA to become the first teacher in space.
Rose was in second grade when the disastrous launch occurred on Jan. 28, 1986.
She remembers the writing prompts she was given to inspire her creativity. “I had all of my class pictures, but they got ruined in a flood,” she added.
Mary (Springer) Oakes attended junior high at Aylesworth. “When I was a teacher’s assistant here for half a day, I was in kindergarten with Mrs. Cantrell.”
She retired after being a teacher’s assistant for 34 years at Myers Elementary.
Len Clark attended Aylesworth from 1975 to 1979, when it was still a junior high. It became an elementary school in the early 1990s. The school opened in 1963.
“I can remember when Mr. Aylesworth died, I got out of school. It was first grade,” Clark, a local historian, said.
Back in the day, there were three junior highs in Portage – Fegely, Aylesworth and Grissom. Grissom is now Portage High School West. Everyone identified themselves by which junior high they attended, Clark said.
Remember the movie “Hoosiers,” in which the Milan high school basketball team won the state championship? Wallace Aylesworth, who was on the IHSAA executive committee, gave the medals to the Milan team after that game, Clark said.
When Clark was still in junior high, Aylesworth’s picture was on the wall by the school office. “In very light pencil, I put my name up there,” Clark said.
Communications Director Melissa Deavers said she hopes the portrait is still where it was, just covered up, and will be revealed when the demolition begins.
Clark also remembers a fish pond under the stairs near the office. “I think they covered it up for health reasons,” he said. Students got to feed fish and hang out by the pond as a reward for good behavior.
Principal Jon Chlebowski will become principal at Jones Elementary next year after two years at Aylesworth. “I haven’t had the longest chapter here at the school. It’s been an honor experiencing and being a part of this rich history.”
“The building is getting torn down, but it’s more than just a building for sure,” he said.
Chlebowski has heard the fish pond story, though the pond was long gone before he arrived.
According to lore, a vending machine nearby allowed students to buy an apple or other snack to eat while watching the fish swim.
On the other side of the stairs is a small door that leads to a storage area. “I always joke that that area, where there’s a little door now, is the place where we keep the kids that get in trouble,” a reversal of where the good kids were rewarded.
For Clark, the fish pond was just one of his memories. “A lot of firsts here. Your first kiss, your first dance, your first fight.”
“You have to go with change; change is inevitable. I just wanted to come back and get one last visual,” he said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
