Beech High students give new life to archive room of history long forgotten

One thing is clear from a trip down memory lane at Beech High Schools Archive and Museum: school was different back in the day. Girls played sports in pleated skirts and hats and boys drove their younger classmates to school in horse-drawn buggies. Students wrote with pens and ink wells, coal was used for heat, and whoever got to school first was responsible for starting the fire.

For Beech High School alumni, now theres a place where that past meets the present thanks to the preservation efforts of two enterprising students.

Corey White and Paige Likes, both seniors, spent much of their spare time this fall semester after school and on weekends reorganizing, remodeling and archiving documents and memorabilia at the schools in-house museum and archive. Although the archive room was established when the current Beech High School opened in 1980, it had not been maintained for several years, said Coach Darrin Joines, who teaches marketing at the school. White and Likes voluntarily took on the project as part of a DECA Club campaign for Joines class.

Everything was all scattered, White said. There was junk, chairs, some podiums and other furniture just everywhere.

Now open to the public by appointment, the exhibit celebrates the schools storied, more than 100-year history in the Shackle Island community.

Named for the numerous Beech trees nearby, the original Beech School was built in 1910 on land donated by Montgomery Hutchison, according to records on file at the Sumner County Board of Education Archives. Because little county funding was available, Shackle Island community members pooled resources and donated time to build the school, records show.

The school originally served students in grades 1-8, but was expanded in 1914 to include the first Beech High School.

Until White and Likes took on the project, both admit they knew little about their schools history, they said. They enlisted the help of their classmates and received advice from Kay Hurt, archivist for the Sumner County Board of Education.

We didnt know what anything was or what to do with it; we were really overwhelmed at first, Likes said. Both were surprised by how much detail goes into archiving and preserving important records, they said.

We learned so much from (Hurt), White said. She explained the significance of everything in (the archive) and gave us a lot of ideas about how we should organize it.

Follow this link:
Beech High students give new life to archive room of history long forgotten