A 125-year-old vacant country school that hasn’t been used for education since 1959, is coming back to life on the windswept prairie in Emmons County.

Often times called the Gimbel School, Gayton School No. 4 near Hazelton was the scene June 12-19 of what could only described as the same as a pioneer barn raising.

Twenty-six volunteers came from as far away as Tennessee, Texas and western Montana to renovate a building that despite it’s age, is in relatively good condition. Numerous donations came in as well to help in purchasing tools and materials.

But long-distance volunteers were only part of the equation. Three of the volunteers actually attended Gayton School No. 4 and wanted to help. Leroy and Monte Humann and Myron Opp were there as children in the 1950s and all three came back to their beloved elementary roots.

In fact, Leroy Humann, Menoken, spent three days doing various tasks from cleaning to putting on new siding to removing electrical wiring that had been installed in the early 1950s. And, for about an hour, Humann worked alongside 11-year-old Leo Small of Rapid City, S.D., a representation of four generations working at the same time.

The others, well let’s just say, all of them have some connection to the school. Parents may have gone there, some may have voted there, or gone to a pie social, or may have been part of German meals that were once quite popular in northwest Emmons County.

The building didn’t look so good, when work began. There was a hole in the roof in which rain and melted snow leaked in and destroyed part of the ceiling and a chalkboard. The siding, which hadn’t been painted since 1992, was replaced, the windows removed to be rebuilt and the chimney repaired.

The one-room school had to be thoroughly cleaned numerous times because birds and raccoons gained access. While cleaning a couple of very interesting discoveries were made.

When the volunteers got started, the ceiling was sagging. One of the volunteers crawled up in the attic only to find that porcupines had eaten through four of the six support beams. In addition, when the stove was cleaned out, a partially burned page of the Bismarck Tribune indicated the last time the stove was used was sometime close to April 7, 1977.

Several desks were in good shape, except that they were riddled with bird droppings. That was all cleaned off, the desks sanded and revarnished. In the process, it was discovered that several names were carved into the wood. It is believed that one name, Yvonne, was a student there in the 1940s.

This wasn’t just a renovation project. Some of the good stories resurfaced, about the students, about the teachers, about Christmas parties and some stories were quite hilarious.

But some of those stories, are too precious to be put in a newspaper article. What happens in Gayton, stays in Gayton. Kidding aside, yes the stories were told on the worksite, but it was agreed they would stay on the worksite and were perhaps a perk of being a volunteer.

Several of the stories have been in the public domain. In one, the students went on a field day to Bismarck. When they got back, the barn to keep students’ horses, had burned to the ground and apparently, one horse was lost in the blaze.

In another, volunteers talked about the teachers, how they often lived with a student’s parents and who they were. Several names surfaced including Everett Brandt, who was apparently the inaugural teacher when the school opened in 1901, two years before Hazelton existed.

One of the unique things about the Gimbel School, is that well into the 1920s, it was also used as a church because at that time, 12 miles to Hazelton or 28 miles to Linton were long distances.

Thus, my own maternal grandparents, John and Katherine “Gimbel” Ackerman, were married in the school in June 1924 and their daughter Amelia (my aunt) taught there for three years.

Every volunteer and donor has some connection to the school and maybe that’s why the project came together like it did. And some of the volunteers hope Gayton School No. 4 is an inspiration to fix up other township schools in rural North Dakota.

The prairie spirit lives on!