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Worth says goodbye to Holley school

• Students and teachers reflect on the closing of Worth County's J.W. Holley school.

Susan McCord

SYLVESTER — Named for the founder of Albany State University, a 52-year-old public school in Worth County closed its doors Friday.

One of at least five schools for black students to open in Worth County during the 1950s, J.W. Holley was the only one to survive integration, remaining in constant use, first as a school for grades 1-12, then as the county’s only junior high school, and since 1992, one of two elementary schools.

“It has served its purpose,” said retired business education teacher Catherine Crapps, whose granddaughter Rachel is a member of Holley’s last class and a third generation to attend the school on Sylvester’s Carter Road.

“There is a time and a season for everything, and it’s the time for us to let it go so the students in that area can have the same type of environment,” she said. “When its time is up, it’s up.”

Since the mid-1990s, a line drawn down the center of Worth divided its elementary-age students between Holley, for families living west of the line, and Sylvester Elementary, a similarly aging school for those east.

In 1956, when Holley opened its doors to grades 1-12, the lines were more clearly drawn.

EARLY EXCITEMENT

Sylvester educator Daisy Gamble remembered the excitement of teaching at a brand-new school.

Another school for black children in grades 1-11, Oak Hill, had burned in the early 1950s, and 32 black churches, staffed with teachers hired by the Board of Education, were providing classrooms, while high school age students were moved to a school near the Dougherty County line.

“Everybody was really pleased when we got Holley,” Gamble said, though the school did not start off with the name J.W. Holley.

“The principal asked us to work on it and come up with a name,” she said. “I’m not sure what all we tossed around, but we came up with Holley, in honor of J.W. Holley, the founder of Albany State College.

“I guess we felt that Dr. Holley had done more to help our area than anyone else,” she said, “and lots of the teachers in Worth County were alumni of Albany State.”

Rowena Morgan worked as a secretary for Holley’s first principal, T.J. Cantrell. Her husband, Joe Morgan, taught chemistry and physics.

“It was kind of good to have schools in a single place, at the time,” she said.

Crapps started off at a rural school in the community of Shingler, but by the time she was in sixth grade, Worth County was busing black students in four directions — to New Hope school in Warwick, Hillcrest in Anderson City, Parker school in Sumner and Ossie Wearry school in Red Rock.

The four “feeder schools” fed Holley, and Crapps was a member of Holley’s fifth graduating class in 1962. She played basketball for the Wildkittens — boys’ teams were the Wildcats — and played in the band.

Four years later, after graduating from Albany State, she was back, hired by Cantrell as a business education teacher.

CHANGING TIMES

Crapps served as adviser for the Memoir, the Holley yearbook, during the last year before Worth County integrated its schools.

In 1970, she became one of 15 black teachers to transfer to Worth County High School.

“Our principal went over there with us,” she said. Cantrell became assistant principal at Worth County High.

Meanwhile, white students and faculty would enter what became Holley Junior High, for grades six through eight. Its new principal was Glenn Hobby.

Gamble remained at Holley, where she’d taught grades two to eight, finding her niche in special education, which she stayed with for 25 years.

While other counties had integrated years earlier, by the time Worth did, Gamble said, she didn’t notice any resistance, especially in the younger grades she taught.

“Parents had decided that this was the law of the land and we were going to abide by the law and the students were, too,” she said.

With 36 years at the school, Gamble, who retired in 1994, said she hates to see it close.

“It’s saddening to me, because I remember all the joys we had at Holley,” she said. “It can’t be any better than we had. I know that we had top-notch students.”

Closing the school ends a chapter for Worth County, she said.

“It really gets rid of the black history,” she said. “It’s like wiping you off the map. Save it for something.”

Like many Worth County educators, Holley’s current principal, Barbara Harvey, attended the school. When she was very young, it was still a black school. To Holley’s final group of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, though, it’s “their” school.

“They’re very proud of Holley and all its accomplishments,” said Harvey, who replaced Holley’s principal from 1992-2007, Barbara Williams.

FINAL FAREWELL

The school held a farewell luncheon for students recently. After Friday, the last day of school in Worth County, educators will have their own farewell.

In the fall, Worth County will consolidate all of its third-, fourth- and fifth-graders at Sylvester Elementary School. Teachers and other staff also will transfer, to Sylvester Elementary or the county’s middle and primary schools, Superintendent Jim McMickin said.

Holley was the county’s last school not located on the system’s central campus, which is located in Sylvester between Georgia Highways 33 and 313.

Elementary enrollment that has declined somewhat means elementary students won’t be too squeezed, and they’ll be at Sylvester Elementary more than a year until a new school is built, McMickin said.

Site preparation started this month on the new, 100,000-square-foot Worth County Elementary School, whose 42 classrooms, cafetorium and gym will educate all of Worth’s third-, fourth- and fifth-graders on the same central campus beginning in January 2010, he said.

The county will then have two 1950s-era schools on its hands. Aging school buildings are costly to maintain and typically ineligible for state funding for renovations, McMickin said.

The system will need to use Holley for storage, but as for the building’s future, “we’re not sure yet,” he said. “We’re trying to work with different organizations, to try and use it for something like a Boys & Girls Club.”

John Newkirk, the former principal of Parker and a retired assistant superintendent, believes much life remains in the Holley building.

“I wondered about that. I said, ‘What are they going to do with that building?’ ” Newkirk said. “They could have something for a recreation center, because it’s right here in town.”

Morgan said she’s heard that Holley may be contaminated with mold. “If the school is in the condition it was reported in, I guess the best thing is to close it and destroy it,” she said.

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