Highline District Grade School Holds A Museum Full Of Memories

-- HIGHLINE

The second floor of Sunnydale Elementary School is an open time capsule that takes travelers through more than 100 years of history.

Every Thursday, former students can return to the free Highline District Museum and look up old classmates and teachers in yearbooks. Youngsters can sit in wooden desks complete with built-in ink wells and hear how their grandparents learned to read, write and add without ballpoint pens, computers or calculators.

A group of Sunnydale parents first started collecting school memorabilia in 1976. When the school closed in 1981 because of low enrollment, Rowena Chaney and the late Carla St. John opened the museum on the second floor and included items documenting the history of all Highline schools and the community, which stretches from White Center to Des Moines west of Interstate 5.

Sunnydale reopened in 1989, but space on the second floor is still reserved for the museum.

An old stove, wash tub, pump sink and oil lamp are among the furnishings in one room set up to resemble Elizabeth Jane Kelly's kitchen, where she organized the first area school in 1878 with 28 students.

Down the hall, another room is designed to look like a turn-of-the-century one-room schoolhouse. It is in the original part of the building built in 1904.

Rows of old-fashioned desks are lined up from large to small, a sign of the different age groups who would have shared the room.

Teachers used to write their questions on slate panels that covered the built-in sliding cloakroom doors, said Chaney, volunteer curator, who brings life to age-old items with her stories.

In the front of the room, a dunce cap sits on a tall stool, where naughty students were relegated.

"The children just love to try it on and sit up there," said Chaney, who often gives tours to elementary classes.

In a tiny, square principal's office next door, a leather strap handily lies across a wooden desk. The strap was designed to sharpen shaving blades, but was used to spank students, Chaney said.

The expected conduct and duties of teachers is spelled out in a framed 1886 sign on the wall.

They had to clean classrooms once a week with soap and water as well as keep outhouses stocked daily with old catalogues. Whether the catalogues were for reading or personal hygiene, no one knows.

Female teachers could never wear a bathing suit or bloomers for cycling, or expose their ankles in public. Men had to always wear a collar and tie. They couldn't roll up their shirt-sleeves. And they couldn't have closely cropped hair unless they were bald or had a scalp disease.

No one could smoke, drink or attend dance halls. And women were fired for getting married or joining any feminist movement.

The museum is filled with information that will even interest people with no ties to the community.

For those who have roots here, the museum can bring tears of joy.

Linda Wheeler, 40, was born and raised in the Highline area and has volunteered and worked as a teaching assistant in the district for seven years. Although she knew of the museum, she never visited it until this summer when she was working with a summer-school class in Sunnydale.

Searching through a museum shelf for some items from the now-closed Chelsea Park Elementary School, Wheeler hoped to come across something from her old grade-school days. What she found was a school cookbook with a recipe for uncooked icing from Ruby Lewis, Wheeler's mother.

"I opened it up and here is my mother's recipe. And when I saw the name it brought back a flood of memories," said Wheeler, whose mother died in 1989. Got a great idea for a local getaway? Give us a call at 946-3970 or write to us at South Times, 31620 23rd Ave. S., Suite 312, Federal Way, WA 98003.

If you go: Take Highway 518 to the Des Moines Memorial Way South Exit; head south and follow the road as it merges with Eighth Avenue South. The Highline School District Museum is on the second floor of the Sunnydale Elementary School at 15631 Eighth Ave. S.. Hours: Thursdays 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m. or by special arrangement by calling 433-2382; 433-2124 or 243-2966.