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One room reunion

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen Ralph Sonnicksen, of Fort Dodge, visits with Agnes Mumper, of Lehigh, inside the Border Plain School at the Fort Museum and Frontier Village Saturday during a reunion for former students. Mumper was a teacher at the school from 1940 to 1944. Now 96, she was 19 when she started teaching there. She taught the full slate of students from kindergarten of eigth grade. "You had to do your homework," she said. "All those papers to check." When she taught there, the building was heated with wood. "There was a wood stove where the piano is now," she said. "I had to take care of the stove though the kids loved to do that, they loved to bring the wood in. Sonnicksen was a student there from 1947 to 1956. "We had a good time," he said. "You heard all the classes lessons. If you didn't get it one year you got it the next." Many of the former students, includiing Don Roosa, of Lehigh, recalled that school was situated so that students had to walk uphill both ways. "Absolutely," Roosa said with a wink.
-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen Janet Sonnicksen, of Lehigh, looks over one of the old books in the Border Plain schoolhouse at the Fort Museum and Frontier Village Saturday afternoon during a reunion for former students of the school once located 3 miles northeast of Lehigh. She was a student there from 1949 to 1958. "I was in the last eigth grade class along with Marvin Trueblood," she said. "I'm proud of my country school." The school closed in May of 1958 after continually operating since it was built in 1857.

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