Visiting Collegiate's Past, Part Three

Our first stop this day was the West Gym, a ‘50’s-vintage structure that actually sits on the east side of campus and has undergone numerous facelifts during its long and useful lifetime.

 

“How can a building on the east be named ‘West’?” I asked my friend, who’s been around long enough that he’s seen pretty much everything. “I’m sure there’s a story.”

 

“There is,” responded Alex, a ’65 Collegiate alumnus and long-time vice-president of development who will retire this summer after 47 years at his alma mater. “It was named for Eugene B. West in appreciation for his work at the Lower School for cost. He was the developer of Mooreland Farms.”

 

“I’ve heard that it’s really structurally sound,” I said, “even if it looks a bit more tattered than our other buildings.”

 

“Yeah,” he replied, “and paid for. Has no mortgage. We had some engineers look at it, and it has great steel in it. Great bones, just old skin.

 

“It’s actually been remodeled many, many times from the locker rooms disappearing to becoming a headquarters for our maintenance personnel. It housed Lower School science and technology for a while. Woodworking was there at one time. We’re short on gyms, and even though it’s old, it still serves a great purpose.”

 

In proximity to the West Gym is a gazebo honoring Dinah Pearsall, a Lower School science teacher who died in an automobile accident on July 29, 1993.

 

It’s a great play area and vantage point for events on the Grover Jones Field and Jim Hickey Track.

 

“Dinah loved the outdoors,” Alex said. “Her family wanted to remember her with a gazebo that we’ve used for many years.”

 

Nearby are three trees. A red maple honors Dot Kannard, who held forth in the Lower School cafeteria with love and kindness for 50 years and is now retired.

 

A white oak memorializes Bill Skinner and a second red maple memorializes Brian McGill. Both were good friends and valued members our physical plant staff who left us too early.

 

“When a family loses a loved one,” Alex said, “they often worry that they’ll be forgotten. When they’re ready to talk about it, we have suggestions about how we can remember these special people. Sometimes, it’s a donation. Sometimes, it’s a tree, which will be here for a really long time. Sometimes it’s a bench or a collection of books for the library.”

 

Next, we walked to Burke Hall, the former cafeteria that gave way to Centennial Hall this past September.

 

It was named in the early ‘70’s for the venerable Elizabeth Burke, who joined the Collegiate family in 1959 as a fourth grade teacher and headed the Lower School from 1961 until she retired in 1978.

 

“Miss Burke did so many things,” Alex said. “She was devoted to her job. She lived in King & Queen County and commuted from there. Eventually, she did have an apartment in Richmond.

 

“It meant so much to this country girl that a building was named in her honor. She had no close family. She never married. Her parents were gone. She was proud that the Burke name would be at Collegiate for a long, long time.”

 

The building – still to be known as Burke Hall – will house the Lower School STEAM program.

 

At the south end of Burke Hall is Nunnally Hall, which in a previous incarnation was North Hall and included administrative offices and classrooms.

 

“When we went to build a new Lower School campus in the ‘90’s,” Alex explained, “we thought we would save the walls, but they weren’t worth saving. It became necessary to create a new building, but we pretty much used the same footprint.

 

“The Nunnally Foundation provided a very nice gift. Grandchildren and great grandchildren of Mr. and Mrs. Moses Nunnally have been in the building, so it all worked.”

 

A moment later, we were watching a guy on a bulldozer clear a spot for the J-K playground just south of Nunnally Hall.

 

It’s one of his favorite spots on campus, Alex said, and he knows pretty much every inch of this place.

 

“That sycamore tree,” he said, “has been here forever. We fought very hard to save it when we did all the construction. We were warned that a tree of this age and size could be damaged by a lot of construction, so we went to extra lengths to save it.

 

“It’s a wonderful shade tree. (Master craftsman) Peter Tlusty built the bench around it, and it’s survived. It used to be the shade tree outside the original Lower School cafeteria. It’s one of our great symbols.”

 

That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for reading. The tour continues.

                                         -- Weldon Bradshaw

 

 (This is the third in a series of Reflections pieces on landmarks around the Collegiate campus.)