Hanawalt Elementary School is 100 Years Young
From coffee bean sack races to cotton candy, Hanawalt students and parents celebrated the schools 100th anniversary.
At a glance Hanawalt Elementary School doesn’t strike you as a place that’s a hundred years old. After all, a good portion of it re-opened as recently as 2004 thanks to a major renovation project funded by the local option sales tax. And physical structure aside, the school teems with the energy that only a few hundred K-5 graders can generate. But it was indeed a full century ago that the original building, fondly referred to these days as “The Castle,” was completed about the same time that Dr. George Hanawalt died and the school board recommended naming the new school in honor of the prominent local sawbones.
Last Friday the whole community celebrated Hanawalt’s centennial in a birthday party after school sponsored by the Hawks’ PTA. There were jugglers. There were funny faces. There was full-course food from barbeque to cotton candy. There were pointy, chin-strapped hats. There was a guy alternately tooling around on a unicycle and a bike that certainly looked circa 1912. In the cafeteria a book fair reminded of the business they’re in while the party outdoors flew in the face of a brisk autumn wind that had the colorful decorative pennants flapping, threatened to upend canopies and was definitely a factor for the cake-walkers and sack-racers.
Brick and mortar do age but schools like this one never do. The energy that keeps them running is timeless. That’s why it makes more sense to describe Hanawalt as truly a hundred years young (and going strong!).
What self-respecting kid wouldn’t want to go to school at a castle?
