‘Echoes’ tells of Iowa’s past

Hollow sounds bounce off the empty hallways as rhythmic footsteps pound the floor inside a dusty building. Long after a school is closed, the memories inside the walls live on in the people who walked those hallways when they were full of chatter.

“Echoes in the Hallways: History and Recollections of 102 Closed Iowa High Schools” explores a high school that is no longer in use in all of the 99 counties of the state. In Jasper County, author James Kenyon uncovered past stories from Lynnville High School, which closed in 1956.

Kenyon spent the better part of 2019 traveling the state talking to people who graduated from or were related to former graduates of the schools. They met in libraries, parks, kitchen tables and more as these people recounted the days when the schools were alive with students.

Kenyon collected 102 stories to include in the book. He originally set out to have 99 but there were a few instances when his request for information was filled by more than one or in speaking to a source, uncovered stories of a neighboring school that he was compelled to include.

For no particular reason, Lynnville was Kenyon’s final stop before compiling all the stories for the book. Many of these high schools closed and consolidated with nearby towns, as was the case with Lynnville when it joined with Sully. While the focus of the book is on closed high schools, it provides the reader much more than that.

“It really is a history book of the state from the early 1830s when the state really started forming in the southeast corner until it was finally settled about 50-60 years later in the northwest corner,” Kenyon said. “Each one I’ve included the beginning of the town, how it got its name. It seemed like once they had a post office, the very next thing they did was build a school or start a school.”

“Echoes” also includes information about notable graduates, teachers, students who served in the military from the Civil War to World War II, pranks, sports and senior trips.

In the Lynnville entry, Kenyon recounted a story from a 1951 graduate Ila Mae Terpstra Sprouse. She told Kenyon about her class trip to St. Louis, the first class allowed to travel out of state for their trip.

“She was so fun telling this story,” Kenyon said.

Sprouse said her class went to a baseball game, watching the Browns play the Cleveland Indians. Iowa native, Bob Feller, didn’t pitch for the visitors that day, but the students waited by the dugout after the game to try to talk to them.

When they saw Feller, they asked for an autograph but he declined. When they told them they were from Iowa, he stopped short and turned to talk to them for a while. He signed a scorecard from the game and that autograph is now on display at the Wagaman Museum 70 years later.

Kenyon grew up in a small town in Kansas, and he credits his teachers that fed his curiosity for history and interest in writing. He adopted Iowa as his new home state, after living in the Cedar Falls area for 43 years. He was a veterinarian and viewed Iowa as a “mecca” for large animals.

After retiring, he started writing. He has published three other books besides “Echoes,” one of which explores former high schools in Kansas called “Golden Rule Days.” Kenyon said the experience for the Kansas book “whetted” his appetite for the project which inspired him to do the same in Iowa.

“I didn’t think I would ever do it for Iowa, but I always tell people it’s sort of like a sore muscle, once it stops hurting, you forget how much work it was and I wanted to do it for now my native state,” Kenyon said.

Now with the Iowa book complete, he swears he will not be doing another one about closed high schools, at least not for a while. Instead, he is focused on other book topics exploring places he has spent time like Alaska and Florida.

“Echoes in the Hallways” can be purchased at Mattingly Music and Book Store in Newton or on Kenyon’s website jamesrkenyon.com.

Contact Pam Pratt at 641-792-3121 ext. 6530 or pampratt@newtondailynews.com