Class of '65 Reunion Bus Tour
Article by Valerie Sliker, Courtesy Wagener Monthly
The A. L. Corbett High School Class of 1965 celebrated their 50th reunion on Friday, June 5, 2015 through Sunday, June 7th, 2015. Back in the day, the school did not have the funds to publish yearbooks and the class lamented the fact that they had no yearbooks to look back on, so they created one, a current one, the A. L. Corbett High School Class of 1965 – Fiftieth Class Reunion which they gave to each classmate at the reunion.
The Class of ’65 was the last group to have attended one room schoolhouses before the state consolidated into multiroom structures in 1954. In light of this significance, they thought it was important to place this memory book in the Wagener Library, the Wagener Museum, the A. L. Corbett Middle School and the Aiken County Museum where it is available to the public.
Thirty-nine students graduated from A. L. Corbett High School in 1965. Most of them had transferred there in seventh grade and had come from the Sardis Elementary School in Salley, SC. Sardis was built in 1954 when the state consolidated one and two room schoolhouses into multiroom structures. The one room elementary schools in our area also included Cedar Grove, Friendship, Gum Ridge, Jerusalem Branch, Oaki Nora, Ocean Grove, Perry, Piney Grove School (in the Skillet), Round Top Colored, Snowville, Union Academy, Union Hill, and Wagener Colored Elementary.
Sardis taught black students from first grade through sixth and was a feeder school for the A. L. Corbett High School in Wagener. Sardis Elementary closed in 1974, soon after school integration in 1970, and its students were bused to A. L. Corbett.
The A.L. Corbett Public School was also established in 1954 and was rated as the fifth most modern in the nation at that time. At its inception, A. L. Corbett housed elementary grades 1 – 6 and high school grades 7 – 12.
A.L. Corbett was built on land donated by former Wagener town mayor and Aiken County School Board member Albert Leon Corbett. Corbett stipulated that this land be used for a school that would help to better educate the Wagener area African American community. He was known as a man who spent the majority of his lifetime helping people that were less fortunate. He thought the educational system for African American students in the Wagener area was deficient and lacked the facilities and equal opportunities that other students had.
Corbett was born in 1889 in nearby Sawyerdale. After serving in the army in World War I, he settled in Wagener to open Corbett’s Mercantile Company. He also became a banker and served as Commissioner for the SC Highway Department.
The significance of this history led Mary Brown and the Class of ’65 Reunion Planning Committee to incorporate these historic schools not only into their memory books, but also into their reunion activities. The reunion became a three-day affair that included a bus tour of Wagener/Salley.
The reunion officers were as follows: Mary Frances Landy Brown, Chairperson; Irene L. Green McCarther, Co-Chairperson; Mary Alton Livingston Smalls, Secretary; Iva Deloris Livingston Jefferson, Assistant Secretary; Ronald Ray Hudson, Treasurer; Milledge Tobin, Treasurer; Frontis Williams, Treasurer; Daisy Authurean Guyton Evans, Chaplain; The Reverend Pearlean Landy Stallworth, Co-Chaplain.
The reunion planning committee took two years to create the memory book and plan the reunion. The reunion began with a meet and greet on Friday night followed by the bus tour on Saturday morning and the main reunion’s semi-formal banquet Saturday night at the Hilton Inn, Aiken, SC. The reunion concluded Sunday morning after worship service at the newly renovated Saron Baptist Church in Wagener.
The class was very grateful to be able to tour both Sardis Elementary (now Salley Head Start) and A. L. Corbett. They presented a plague of gratitude to both schools as well as to the town with a presentation to Mayor Mike Miller and Councilman George Smith at Crescent Cities Park.
In a conversation with Mary (Landy) Brown, she related the experience of coming back to her roots after so many years. “We took the bus back to A. L. Corbett,” Brown said, “and we were in shock when we got there. The school we knew against the school we saw was two different animals. The only things left at that school that we recognized was the gymnasium and the auditorium. Everything else was new. The gym and auditorium were the only things they kept. Everything else was torn down and rebuilt.
“We all sat in the auditorium chairs together and took a picture. We couldn’t believe how small those chairs were! Then we got up on the stage and we just had a great time and we looked through the school’s display of awards and trophies.”
In the memory book, Brown tributes the school for the success and prosperity of the class. “The wisdom and experience obtained from this educational journey has seasoned us for life here and beyond. We have become educators, postal workers, ministers, medical and civilian caregivers, counselors, administrators, secretaries, parents, grandparents and friends.
“Our lives have taken different directions, but those years at A. L. Corbett High School remind us of a time when we were younger and not so wise. We are here to celebrate us this weekend. It is a time to reexamine how our alma mater gave us the strength to overcome the buffets of dailiness and career adversities and other personal challenges.”
Back in our interview, Brown continued, “Out of the 39 students who graduated, only 16 or 17 went away to college. Wagener was a farming community. It was honest work, but it was hard work. People wanted to get away from farm work. Many who graduated went north to New York, New Jersey, Washington DC or Maryland where the job opportunities were better. Up there, you could find an entire Wagener community in any one of those four places.”
Brown attended Paine College in Augusta. She earned her Master’s in Health Service Administration in a satellite program with Central Michigan University. Brown then remained in Augusta GA working at the VA Medical Center as the Genetic Counselor for Rare Blood Disorders. For 27 years, Brown worked in this department and worked with a cutting-edge study at the Medical College of Georgia that was supported and funded by the NIH and President Richard Nixon’s National Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act.
Brown then headed up the Teleretinal Program for the VA Center, another cutting-edge program responding to the increasing needs of Veterans with diabetes. After working for the VA Center for 40 years, Brown retired in 2016, just one year after her 50th class reunion.
Since the reunion and the publication of the memory book, the Class of ’65 was invited as a special guest to Busbee Elementary / A. L. Corbett Middle School’s Black History Program called “The Empowerment of Education: The True Meaning of Black History Month.” Brown delivered a speech titled “A Moment of Inspiration” during the Feb. 22, 2014 program.
Mary Brown is in her second year of retirement and shows no signs of slowing down. She and the planning committee have a meeting in December, 2017 to decide what to do next. I suggested that the Class of ’65 take their bus to the statehouse and do a presentation to the governor. I just kind of like the idea of a Class of ’65 Party Bus rolling across the state. Brown laughed, “Well, we aren’t a bunch of spring chickens, you know. We have to take a lot of bathroom breaks and we can’t go too far before our legs swell up.” But I saw the glint of excitement in her eyes when she asked, “Do you know how I could make that happen?”
More Photos:
Reunion Planning Committee
Class of '65 Presentation to the Salley Head Start where the class attended elementary school.
One Room Schoolhouses of SC.
