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Wagner School reunion By WENDY SIPOREN TALENT -- When Paul Williams thinks back to 1945, he doesn�t remember WWII. The then first-grader was busy with some matches and a pile of dried leaves trying to burn down the Wagner Creek School. "It was a very small fire. The building was stucco," recalled Williams, now 61. He doesn't remember exactly why he wanted to avoid school that day. He does remember what happened next, and the tool used to make sure he wouldn't try it again. "Then a teacher set my butt afire," he said. "I remember it was a board." What that 6-year-old didn't know was that 55 years later he'd be going back to the same school with a different attitude and no matches. On Sunday, Williams and 30 other graduates will be returning to the old Wagner Creek School to meet each other and exchange stories about the two-room schoolhouse, built in 1929 and used until the 1950s, when the district consolidated with Talent. It's the first reunion for the former students of Wagner School, now transformed into a retreat and conference center by Poppie Beveridge, who has lived on the property for the past 25 years. Beveridge will open the historic building for tours after an 11 a.m. lunch at the Talent Community Center. Throughout the day, volunteers from the Talent Historical Society with help from the Southern Oregon Historical Society will be recording the memories for posterity. "We know so little information," said Talent Historical Society Director Marian Angele. "That's one of the reasons we're doing this." The interviews, along with photos and memorabilia, will be added to a growing collection of Talent-area history available to the public at the museum. William's aunt, 87-year-old Sadie Jones Williams, doesn't remember attending the stucco school. She attended an earlier version of the Wagner Creek School from 1918 through 1926. Another former student, 93-year-old Margaret Bagley Hallowell of Phoenix, Ariz., visited earlier this month to record her memories of the school she attended from 1913-1915. That one-room wooden school was built sometime around the turn of the century and stood behind the current school. A second classroom, cloakroom and belfry were added in 1910 to accommodate a growing population of children in the area. The only thing remaining from the original schoolhouse is the school bell, now in the hands of the Newbry family who used to own the property. "School started at 8 and let out at 4," said Sadie. "We walked in on the side next to the cloakroom. There was the big pot-bellied stove that heated the two rooms." Though both the same size, one room was called the "little room," the other the "big room," referring to whether it housed grades one through four or five through eight. "I'm so excited about this (reunion) because it's been so many years since 1926," she said, studying three photographs of students in front of the original school. "I knew these kids so well. We were like brothers and sisters." The closeness of being educated with 35 other children is a memory that former student Rick Nagel holds dear. "There were two of us in the seventh grade,'' recalls Nagel, who attended in 1949-50 and now makes his home close to the school. "I was either the first in the class or the last." Nagel says he learned a new trade at the school � repairing a window that stood in the way of baseballs hit in a line drive behind the school. "They had all the stuff there to fix it," he said. "I became rather proficient at fixing windows." "The days of the two-room schoolhouse are over," said Nagel. "It's a special thing. Not everybody has experienced it." Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA