Portions of this story were written by Ken Gottry.
On Sept. 4, 1951, the CCS Class of 1952 entered the “new school” at 24 South Park St. for their senior year. The old school burned in 1947, so students attended classes in buildings and churches throughout the village for four years while the community addressed building the new school.
Building the New School (1950-1951)
The cornerstone ceremony was Sept. 28, 1950. Gardner Cullinan, mayor, was master of ceremonies. Speakers included Clarence Coulter, BOE president; Ernest W. Bodenstab, principal; Mrs. Seth Craig, PTA president; Ken Wilbur, faculty president; Mrs. Caroline P. Perry, long-time district superintendent; and Elmer Dering, Student Council president.
Clarence Coulter laid a copper box inside the cornerstone (the 1950 marker to the right of the original Main Entrance). This time capsule contains election ballots, budgets, advertising material on bids for the school, a program and various news stories of the new building.
When the new school was originally proposed in 1946, it was designed to house 720 students, but it was scaled back in size. There were 29 classrooms, a library, cafeteria, agriculture room, board room and a gymnasium-auditorium.
By 1955, the school was already bursting at the seams as baby boomers reached school age and more one-room schoolhouses merged into CCS. Six years after the new school opened, the first addition was added.
The first teachers in the new school
- K – Eva Carpenter & Marilyn Wager
- 1 – Helen Buckley & Theresa Warner
- 2 – Mary Parrish & Elizabeth Waite
- 3 – Kathryn Scully & Eva Oberriter
- 4 – Rebecca Bell & Edna Welling
- 5 – Rosalie Purdy & Maude Snell
- 6 – Alice Murdoch & Helen Wallace
- Instrumental music – Edward Barrow
- Vocal music – Jennie Dempsey
- Art – Bernice Flint
- Vocational Ag – Frederick Salzer
- Commercial – Edwin Green
- Librarian – Iona Skinner
- Nurse – Evalena Marsh
- Boys Phys Ed – Carson Fuller
- Girls Phys Ed – Eva Nadeau
- Homemaking – Leta Tully
- English – Olive Noteman
- French – Olive Theissen
- Latin – Celia Kent
- Mathematics – Herbert Ginsburg
- Mathematics – Ruth Weir
- Scient – Ken Wilbur
- Social Studies – Andrew Rossetti
- Social Studies – Ethel Sherin
The first graduating class
On Monday June 23, 1952, the first class graduated from the new school, the 61st since the old school opened in 1891. The commencement ceremony was held in the auditorium of the new school.
CCS Class of 1952:
- Howard Jay Andrew
- Evelyn Verna Beals
- Robert Nelson Bell
- Thomas Graham Bell
- Catherine Elizabeth Bounds
- Rena Mae Burrall
- Robert Richard Dering
- Mary Kathryn Dunigan
- Leonard Lloyd Germain
- Thomas Gerry Gorman
- Donald Everette LeGrys
- Betty Barbara Lincoln
- Albertine Gundrun Lunos
- Helen Jean Marsh
- Barbara Elizabeth McAllister
- Harry Edwin McNitt
- Fremont Harold Meerwarth, Jr
- Evelyn Jane Merriman
- Jeffery Charles Moffitt
- Richard William Noxon
- James Richard Peabody
- Frank James Pemrick Jr.
- Lawrence Wilton Presler
- Dorothy Ann Purdy
- Virginia Grace Robinson
- John Peter Rogers
- Maurice Leo Santerre
- Gerhard Schoen
- John Edward Shirwell
- Linwood Franklin Strout
- Gladys Belle Van Guilder
- Marian Jean Wallace
- Theodore LeRoy “Bud” Williams
- Robert Edward Wocell
- Vera Adelia Wulff
