If you were looking for an easy bit of class credit at the school newspaper that Sharon Dwyer ran in the 1950s, she had just the job for you: Circulation.

You could deliver a paper to everyone in the school and never leave your classroom.

For the first eight years of her public schooling, Dwyer went to one of Douglas County’s one-room schoolhouses, where the entire school’s enrollment — grades 1 through 8 — seldom topped 20 students and the school’s faculty numbered just one.

Maybe the idea of needing a newspaper to keep up with the happenings of a school that occupied just a few hundred square feet seems odd to you. But maybe you don’t know much about the happenings of a one-room schoolhouse.

First of all, students had an hour lunch break every day, and a lot can happen in an hour when first through eighth graders run around a country school yard. Usually a softball game would break out, and you wouldn’t want to miss the news about the team’s best hitter: Ms. Pratt, the school’s teacher.

Then there were the necessary public service announcements. Like: When you go to the two-hole outhouse, be sure to check for snakes. There have been recent reports of them getting a rise out of folks, if you know what I mean.

Of course, there also was the culture scene. Fine ice skating performances were common. You see, there was a pond in the next pasture over, and the kids would bring their skates for recess.

“Can you imagine that happening in a school now?” Dwyer asked with a laugh.

(No. Unfortunately, snakes in a toilet seem to be the only thing I can imagine at the moment. Thanks for that nightmare, Sharon.)

And then there were the scandals to cover, like the Red Dress Scandal. Norman Beeghley, a student the newspaper would perhaps label as ornery, began wielding a pen with permanent ink, and jokingly waved it in Dwyer’s direction. Pretty funny, until the pen actually broke and ruined Dwyer’s new red dress.

A breaking news story, if there ever was one, for the school paper. Circulation probably surged. Well, probably not.

•••

There were not many surges at the Willow Springs School of Douglas County — District No. 51, if you’re keeping track. Instead, life was pretty steady and pretty good, alumni said.

“We didn’t know anything different,” said Mike Flory, a rural Douglas County resident who attended the school in the 1950s. “But looking back, it worked well for us.”

Alumni of the school soon will be doing a little looking back. On Saturday, Flory is hosting a reunion of former Willow Springs students. About 30 students and their families have signed up to attend.

In typical country fashion, Flory explains that the school used to be located a mile and a half west of the old Zarco gas station and then another mile south. (If you are not a fan of our country GPS, that is a mile and half west and then south of the intersection where U.S. Highway 59 and Douglas County Route 460 intersect south of Lawrence.)

But don’t gather your Big Chief notebooks and No. 2 pencils and head out to the site. After decades of operation, the school closed in 1963. The building was moved to private property in southwest Douglas County in the late 1970s or early 1980s, Flory estimates.

Willow Springs got caught up in school consolidation. A new school that combined other rural schools — it was called Marion Springs school — was built at Worden in southwest Douglas County.

“And we called it progress,” said Carl Flory, a cousin of Mike’s who also attended the school in the 1950s.

It probably was progress, most alumni will concede. After all, students having access to more than one teacher, or one room, for that matter, isn’t a bad thing. But the move didn’t come without some loss.

Until the school’s closing, there still was a group of kids and families that considered their community to be Willow Springs, even though any semblance of the town of Willow Springs had disappeared long ago. But the school brought the residents of about a six-mile-square area together for Christmas programs, graduations and other school events.

Today, Willow Springs still is the name of a Douglas County township, but it would be a stretch to hear kids say they’re from Willow Springs. Doris Pratt, the former teacher and renowned softball slugger at the school, said the one-room system essentially ensured a sense of community and connection.

“Back then, the class was more of a family than individuals,” said Pratt, now 82 and still living in rural Douglas County.

It is not always like that in rural Douglas County anymore.

“I have neighbors that I don’t know,” said Dwyer, who lives about four miles from the school’s original site. “Isn’t that sad?”

•••

For a day anyway, the community will be back together. Although the bulk of the reunion will be held at Mike Flory’s farm south of Lawrence, the group will make a special trip. Flory has arranged a quick tour of the old school building, which now is used as a rental home.

For most of the alumni, it will be the first time they’ve stepped foot in the building since their classes ended. Many are interested in seeing just how small their one room was. As a child, it seemed like part of a wide, wide world.

“That building had a stage, and when we were doing our programs, Carnegie Hall would have been small compared to that,” Norman Beeghley said.

Yes, Norman, the permanent ink pen troublemaker, is attending the reunion. He is coming in from his home in California. He said he couldn’t miss it. The school provided him too much over the years.

“I’ve always thought that the advantage it gave me was it taught me some independence and self-reliance,” said Beeghley, who had a successful career as an executive with Prudential Insurance. “You know what you did in a one-room school? You just kept up. You didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about whether you could do this or do that. There was just an expectation that you would keep up.”

Sure, it probably didn’t work that well for everyone. Certainly there are a lot of advantages to the modern-day schools, alumni say. But the little one-room, one-teacher system worked better than most may think.

Perhaps it is because even though there was just one classroom to learn in, there were lessons being taught everywhere: Whether it was a teacher’s sportsmanship on the softball field, a nature lesson in an outhouse or an exercise in the human spirit when an older student would come over to help a younger one.

Beeghley said he’s certain he’s going to enjoy reminiscing about all the lessons they learned. There’s also at least one other certainty about this upcoming reunion.

“Oh yeah,” Dwyer said. “I’m definitely going to remind him about the dress.”

— Each Sunday, Lawhorn’s Lawrence focuses on the people, places or past of Lawrence and the surrounding area. If you have a story idea, send it to Chad at clawhorn@ljworld.com.