NEW GLARUS — Much like when it was in use, the little Meadow Valley schoolhouse was simultaneously filled with students over a range of ages as alumni and their teacher reunited Oct. 11. 

For decades, the school held children from first through eighth grade, taking turns with the teacher as they learned their individual levels of math, social studies and more. This time they were gathered for a reunion. 

“I just have a lot of great memories from school,” said Kathryn Ott Disch, who attended kindergarten in New Glarus before starting first grade at Meadow Valley School.

Disch recalled activities like playing softball and sledding on pieces of cardboard down the hill, as well as classroom tasks that needed to be done, like pounding erasers or, the one she liked best, raising and lowering the flag. 

She said she believed she was the oldest one at this year’s reunion; the other attendees who signed the guestbook started at Meadow Valley between 1951 and 1959. 

Disch was even just a few years older than the reunion’s special guest: teacher Darlene Lancaster, who was 20 years old when she began teaching there in 1961-62, the last year before it closed.

“[The students] were so accepting and respectful,” said Lancaster. “I still have precious memories of each individual,” she said, sticking in her mind because they were so well-behaved. She also enjoyed hearing their recollections. 

“It’s fun listening to what the children all remember,” she said. 

For Ruth Elmer, that included the memory of being able to put on corduroy pants under your dress if it was cold. 

“You didn’t just wear pants,” she explained. 

Elmer also said that the school is the reason she knows how to fold a flag properly.

“I was telling Mrs. Lancaster, I have never regretted going to a one-room school,” said Dwayne Hefty, adding that it was a great experience all eight years. Hefty went on to New Glarus High School after being one of the last to complete eighth grade at Meadow Valley.

Lancaster brought along a scrapbook filled with student photos. It also contained multiple letters, like one from Elmer postmarked July 17, 1962, asking if Lancaster’s “stomach stay[ed] in the basement” when she went up in the Space Needle at the Seattle World’s Fair that opened that year. 

That was also the year when Meadow Valley’s remaining students were consolidated into other schools. Now the building is owned by Bob and Nan Rudd, where it’s filled with art and art supplies. But chalkboards and pull-down maps stand as vestiges of its former life.

Lancaster noted that there were 11 families among the students she taught in that final class, and all but two or three of those families were represented at this month’s reunion. 

“We don’t think we’re very important as an individual,” she said. “But when you get together and you see the lives that you’ve influenced … [it] makes you think we are each individually important.”