I have wonderful memories of my years (1959-1966) at Centennial Elementary School, and remember these years as a very happy, innocent time.

I loved the bustle and routine of the school, the seemingly huge hallways, and the clean lines of its late 1950s architecture – the symmetry of the brickwork and the cool efficiency of the aluminum trim, door and window frames was to my eyes the grandest sort of building any child could imagine. School was actually fun – most of the time. Of course, I loved my summers even more and longed for them around this time each year.

>From my kindergarten school-home report booklet: I enjoyed listening to stories, singing, and using large paint brushes, clay, crayons, blocks and scissors. My report card noted that I had “many friends at school” and should have “no problem learning to read or write.” I also loved pulling out my mat for naptime.

My first grade teacher Elfie Bailey noted that I worked quickly, was happy and cheerful, active, had many friends, and was “very nervous and often hummed” as I worked. I remember working with pennies, nickels and dimes in class to learn addition, subtraction and two place numbers. At the end of the year she wrote, “I hope Bruce will continue reading this summer and earn a reading certificate.” Little did she (or I) know that one day I’d be signing those certificates as library director.

My second-grade teacher wrote that I “did not apply” myself at all times – and if I did, I would not need to take my work home. Report cards in later grades were strewn with comments about my work habits, “careless errors,” and the need to apply myself. In retrospect, it was clear that a large part of my learning process during these years was an effort to inculcate discipline and pride in one’s work. Meanwhile, though, I kept my desk in a state of perpetual squalor, learned to love the smell of those pink rectangular erasers and nursed a dread fear of “lead poisoning” from the numerous times when either I or some other barely civil young boy jabbed a pencil into their flesh.

It is said that people remember where they were at times of great crises. I recall the look on my father’s face when he picked me up from school and told me the president had been shot. My other Kennedy recollection was his inauguration (being home sick that day, I was able to watch the impressive, somber men in dark coats and top hats).

The playground was a place of some frustration in early years, as I showed a desire to be physically active, but was forced to sit and watch, due to shortness of breath and lack of stamina resulting from a congenital heart defect. When this was successfully repaired through the fairly new procedure known as “open heart” surgery in 1962, when I was in third grade, my world changed – I got my first bicycle and was able to fully participate in outdoor games and activities. I felt like I was always a little behind the other kids in sports, so my few kickball triumphs were very sweet indeed. I recall the immense “get well” card I received from my third grade classmates, the difficult, LONG chapter books I had to read, the totally perplexing thing call “long division,” and the smell of finger paints. Wearing my Cub Scout uniform to school was a point of pride. We followed the early space program with tremendous interest. My parents had seemed worried by something called “Sputnik.” Perhaps these mysterious Cold War fears were one reason why my classmates and I so enthusiastically cheered on Scott Carpenter and John Glenn and listened with such tense anticipation as they achieved milestones in manned space flight.

I had the same teacher in third and fifth grade, the wonderful, long-suffering Betty Brune. I remember third grade as very challenging and frustrating, mostly because she expected so much and didn’t allow me to just coast. In fifth grade, I was more enthusiastic about my studies, and found great joy in music (singing, marching around the room, learning “Do-Re-Mi” from the new movie, “The Sound of Music”), and loved to listen as she read books to the class.

Assemblies in gym were fun, and Bell Science series of 16 mm educational films shown in the gym (Our Mr. Sun, Hemo the Magnificent) were thrilling to me.

I really loved to read, but sometimes rebelled when I was told what to read. It was around this time that I discovered the New Tom Swift adventures, and neglected many more deserving works of literature to indulge my interest in atomic-powered airplanes, diving seacopters, spaceships and his endless parade of other fanciful inventions.

Returning from school one day, I informed my parents of two new words I had learned (I remember distinctly which two they were). The taste of soap was an unfit punishment, I felt, for simply educating my parents of their existence. After all, I didn’t use them in context, not knowing the meaning of either word.

In sixth grade, having read Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, I recruited two of my classmates to join my spy club. We kept meticulous notes on the comings and goings of fellow students and held huddled debriefings on the playground. Somehow (I still attribute it to the uncanny extra-sensory perceptions that all teachers seemed to possess), my teacher Mrs. Kolka penetrated our spy ring, and with one firm but kind conversation put a stop to our ultra-secret activities.

I think it was also that year that the principal spoke to me for the first time. I was dragging (literally) a younger child (my younger brother) through the dust of the playground, when he approached and told me to cease and desist. I retorted, “But he’s my brother!” at which the principal smiled (why, I wondered, at the time) and told me to stop anyway. I was forced to return to the jungle gym and chin-up bars to pursue less satisfying pursuits.

I walked to school in those innocent days, and had a special place under the school’s chain-link fence that I could squeeze under and shave off a few seconds on my trip. I also took to making shortcuts through some neighborhood back yards to make my trip even shorter, but abandoned that practice when some fed-up housewife tossed a bucket of water at me one day.

Perhaps my crowning achievement in grade school was the day I tried a rather gruesome magic trick out on my sixth-grade classmates and was rewarded by loud screams! That, of course, was the ultimate accomplishment.

Looking back, they were very happy years for me. I wish I could go back in time to experience again some of those times, and see my classmates and teachers again as they were then. I am extraordinarily saddened to see the closing of Centennial Elementary School. The spirit of that time lives on in my heart, and it has been a pleasure for me to see Centennial still around, still teaching students. Several years ago I went to the school one evening, just to walk around it, to peer in the windows and sniff the air around my old school. That’s the way I think of it, “my” school.