Margaret Young Rose, class of 1951, left, reaches to hug former Oak Ridge classmates Catherine Cole Bufkin and her brother Zane Grey “Boots” Cole Saturday during the school’s reunion at Oak Ridge Community Center. (Melanie Duncan ThortisThe Vicksburg Post)

[5/16/04]Catherine Cole Bufkin is 85, and her brother Zane Grey “Boots” Cole is 79, but their age didn’t affect their memories Saturday when they recalled daily trips to Oak Ridge School in a makeshift school-bus wagon.

“We’d be the first ones on the wagon in the morning,” Bufkin said. “Our daddy would heat up bricks to ride beside us so our feet would keep warm. We’d travel all over the county and, by the time we got to school (90 minutes later), those bricks were cold as ice and so were our feet.”

Bufkin and Cole and other students in the 1930s traveled to school in the wagon made with cloth sides. On Saturday, they were among more than 150 alumnae of Oak Ridge School who gathered at the Oak Ridge Community Center, formerly Oak Ridge Methodist Church, to reminisce, catch up and rack their brains, placing names with faces.

The school in the Oak Ridge community, in the northeast corner of Warren County, was built in 1916 and closed in 1957. It served students in the first through the 12th grades.

“I’ve seen a good many I recognized, and some I have seen in the past 30 years or so,” said 92-year-old Irma H. Hintson, who attended Oak Ridge from 1917 until 1930.

“I have a bad knee, so I can’t get up to socialize,” Hintson said as he sat on a bench. “But people keep stopping to socialize with me.”

The reunion was the brainchild of Ed Westcott, 80, who now lives in Tallahassee, Fla.

“I was born and raised out here and left after the ninth grade in 1939 for the Army. I always remembered two groups of people from my life the guys I served with in the war and these people I went to school with here,” he said.

Westcott wondered if anyone else might be interested in a reunion of sorts, and shortly after publishing his idea in The Vicksburg Post in March, his question was answered.

“I got a response, and soon after we got together on a Sunday afternoon and went through names of those that went to school there,” he said. “We went through that list and made note of who has died and made phone calls from there.”

Before he knew it, Westcott’s brainchild was a huge success.

As the old friends arrived and greeted one another, hugs were exchanged, followed by a quick glimpse at each name tag and then bigger hugs.

Mary Barbara Hackler Dunn, class of 1944, hugged Lealia McBroom Shingler, class of 1938, twice once to say hello, and again when they realized they hadn’t seen each other in 50 years.

“I believe you’ve gotten shorter,” Dunn told Shingler.

When Shingler agreed, Dunn added, “At least not just wider like me.” Both burst into laughter.

And it was those kinds of fun comments that led to a room of laughs and memories for more than four hours.

Cole and Bufkin meandered throughout, making comments and receiving.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Boots,” said Edgar Brasfield, class of ’44. Boots Cole, who lived near Redwood, left his classmates in 1942 to join U.S. forces in World War II, just after Pearl Harbor was bombed.

“Boots Cole? Is that you? It’s been a while about 60 years, I think,” said Thomas Henry, class of ’43.

Before Oak Ridge School opened, most area children went to schools for five to 10 students on such roads as Ballground, Youngton and Russellville.

In 1928 the school burned, and a brick one replaced it in 1929. The same year, Redwood students in grades 9-12 headed to Oak Ridge School. In 1944, Oak Ridge students in grades 9-12 headed to Redwood, and Oak Ridge became a grade school. The school closed in 1957, and no remnants of the building remain.

Elbert Redditt, class of 1940, likes to joke that he burned the school down. But then he says he would have had to leave Redwood but he’s been there all his life.

“I really didn’t burn the school down, but I always tell people I didn’t learn enough to leave,” said Redditt, 82, who for 55 years has owned Redditt’s Grocery, down the road from the school site.

Ninety-three-year-old Susie McBroom Sasser is the oldest alumnus of the school and clearly remembers when the school burned.

“The next day we went to class in the mule barn,” she said. “I graduated a few months after it burned in 1929, and we graduated right here in this church since we couldn’t graduate at the school. There were four girls and four boys in our class. We mostly kept up for years, but now they’re all gone.”

Jack Pace, 55, was the youngest. He attended Oak Ridge in his first and second grades, the last two years the school was open.

Pace wears his late mother’s 1926 Oak Ridge class ring around his neck. His mother, Hazel Pettway, died in 1998 at the age of 90.

“She would have loved a reunion like this. I still have all her report cards at home. Oak Ridge meant a lot to her,” he said.

And Oak Ridge meant a lot to many of its alumnae.

“Oak Ridge gave me the incentive to accomplish more than the average person,” Bufkin said.

“We were average country folk that were grateful for the opportunity to receive an education we wouldn’t dare take that for granted by misbehaving. We were children of the Depression, and we had wonderful teachers and a wonderful learning environment. We looked forward to going to school each day. We loved it,” she said.