Former students share memories

Kitty Warner, Jean Anderson, Mary Fraser, and Lou Reznicsek (L.- R.) share memories of school days at Black Butte School. photo by Conrad Weiler

Four Black Butte School students held a reunion last week on the site of their former school in Camp Sherman.

Jean (Zevely) Anderson, Mary (Zevely) Fraser, Lou (Henrichs) Reznicsek, and Kitty (Bruns) Warner toured the site, fondly remembering the 1940-41 year when they were classmates in the one-room Camp Sherman school.

This was the site of the second of three Black Butte schools and it served the community between 1917 and the 1950s. It was located on Road 1420, about one-half mile north of Allingham Road.

"It was a one-room schoolhouse with a storage shed and two outhouses behind the school," said Reznicsek. "A one-room school is good if you have a good teacher. We were family with the older children helping the younger students. This is a valuable lesson. We had so much fun that year."

"Our mother (Jean and Mary are sisters), Grace Zevely, was teacher for grades 1 through 8," said Fraser. "We had no water or electricity at the school. There was a wood stove and we used kerosene lamps. The school year ran from September to early May."

"I remember the wonderful Christmas program," said Anderson. "There was a pump organ for music at the school."

Reznicsek fondly opened her journals from that school year, written in perfect longhand. There were descriptions of the weather, the upcoming presidential election, and school events.

"(During) 1940s winters Camp Sherman probably had about 35 to 50 residents," one of the women remembered. "We had seven students in the school and some years it dropped to three."

Sisters Jean and Mary remember tap dancing classes in Sisters and Camp Fire programs for the girls in Redmond.

"I remember Jean making very intricate bead patterns at Camp Fire meetings," said Mary Fraser.

One of the year's highlights was a field trip to Abbott Butte as a school outing.

"We had a very good education at Black Butte School," said Reznicsek. "Once a year, Lilian Watts, the school superintendent, would come from Madras and visit the school."

The school had a homemade merry-go-round and a teeter-totter for playtime.

Kitty Warner, who lived on her family's ranch, often rode her horse to school.

"My father raised clover and pigs," said Warner. "The growing season is rather short in Camp Sherman. We went to Redmond for farm equipment and Bend when we needed a doctor or lawyer."

The General Store in Camp Sherman was one room and smaller than the current store, Fraser said.

"The phone operator was in Sisters and she handled all our calls," she said. "She was also a nurse so sometimes there wasn't any phone service if she had medical calls. The Forest Service had their own phone lines for communication."

All of the women remember the wonderful ice cream at George Aitken's Sisters Drug Store.

"He made his own ice cream, it was always vanilla, I think, and always delicious," said Fraser.

"There were 250 CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) boys working in the area and living at what is now Riverside campground," Fraser noted. "Most of them were from Alabama and Mississippi and very well behaved."

Now, over 60 years later, what have these four outstanding women done in their lives? Anderson went on to the University of Oregon for her degree in architecture, a field in which she is still involved.

"One of my first projects was working for two years on redesigning the old Pilot Butte Inn located in Bend," she said. "Unfortunately, plans were scrapped and the building torn down."

Anderson lived for many years in Port Townsend, Washington, and now lives at Crooked River Ranch.

"I hated to leave here," said Reznicsek, who now lives in Redmond. "I went to business school in Portland, met my future husband who was a minister and we ministered to the deaf."

Fraser now works at the historical society in Bend and lives in Bend.

Kitty Warner attended high school in Sisters and boarded in town at the Sisters Hotel (now Bronco Billy's), then owned by Carl Poschwatta.

"It was too long a trip over poor roads to go back and forth to Camp Sherman each day," she said.

Warner continues her work as a successful Realtor. She has homes in Bend and Camp Sherman.