LORAIN – If you ask longtime friends Samantha Szabo, Rebecca Deaton, Toni Rees and Bart Hamrick to point to the time that solidified their friendship, they say 1981 to 1983, when they were students at Whittier Junior High School.
There, the four met and made memories to last a lifetime.
Szabo, Deaton and Rees said they all had homeroom together.
They sat side-by-side every day, and that proximity was all that was needed for them to become good friends.
Hamrick said he had known Szabo and Rees since second grade and welcomed Deaton into the fold as soon as he met her.
Over the years, all have remained close, and on Saturday they walked the halls of Whittier together for the last time.
The school, on Seneca Avenue on the city’s south side, closed at the end of last school year. In the future, the shuttered building will be torn down and a new school built in its place.
It was built in 1922.
The group of friends did not think about the end Saturday as a Farewell to Whittier event was held at the school. Instead, they laughed and talked about the days of yesteryear when big hair, crazy clothes and avoiding the back side of the principal’s paddle were more important.
“Every classroom you walk into, you know exactly what you said or did,” Hamrick said with a laugh.
“Yeah, but this place sure seems smaller,” added Deaton, who had a camera in her hand and snapped photo after photo of her friends.
The mementos will soon be the only thing beyond their fond memories to remind them that the Whittier they knew and loved ever existed.
“They rebuild stuff and give it a new name, but they are taking away our memories,” Reese said.
Whittier was the place where Hamrick said he learned how to draw his first three-dimensional house. Deaton made a lead-cast hot dog complete with fixings. Szabo said being a member of the girls track team kept her in shape. When it was warm outside, they ran around the building, and when it wasn’t good weather they simply came before school started and ran in the hallways.
“You can take away the building, but the memories are still here,” she said.
More than 200 people came to the school for one last look Saturday.
“It’s so sad to know it’s being torn down,” said 51-year-old Ana Arebalo of Lorain. “There are a lot of memories in these halls. I still have a lot of the same friends I made while I was here.”
Arebalo graduated from Whittier in 1973. She was there for seventh and eighth grade before moving on to Southview High School, which Lorain Schools also closed at the end of last school year.
“We used to run down these hallways when we weren’t supposed to,” she said. “But that’s in the past. They have closed all of my schools; first it was Lowell Elementary, now Whittier and Southview are gone.”
Arebalo said both of her children attended Whittier and Southview, and she felt comfortable to have them in the neighborhood at a familiar place.
“I don’t know if closing all these school will ultimately be good for the district,” she said. “It will definitely save money, but are the children getting what they need now?”
School board member Paul Biber, Whittier alumnus from 1961, said he also remembers some good times at Whittier, but the old building was not in good shape.
“It would cost us more money to keep the building open than to build a new one,” he said. “We were spending well over $100,000 a year just to maintain the roof. Over the years, that will quickly add up to millions.”
A date for when the school will be demolished has not been set. Before the walls can come down, the district must go through a process of offering the building for sale.
Biber said he doesn’t believe the building will sell.
“No one has bought any of the old buildings we have closed and torn down,” he said. “Buying an old building like that would mean the new owner has to take on the same maintenance issues we had. No one really wants that.”
Contact Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or lroberson@chroniclet.com.
