Valley Girl Views: Red Top School, Lewisburg PA

The Red Top School

285 Hospital Drive, Lewisburg Pa

Former pupil recalls teacher

By John G. Huckaby [1978]

LEWISBURG John Henry Follmer was unlike any teacher I ever had before or ever had since. In fact, he may have been unlike any teacher that anyone ever had.

"Hen" Follmer was from a different era, the era of the one-room school house. If he taught today, he probably would fit right in - with the new emphasis on the basics of education. While "Hen" taught the basics he also taught about life - or at least as he viewed it.

"Hen" taught me during' the 50's in a one-room school house known as the Red Top school located in Kelly Township northwest of the Evangelical Community Hospital, Lewisburg. The school still stands, only several hundred yards from the Kelly Township Elementary School, built in the late 1950s. But "Hen" is gone. "Hen" didn't run the conventional class because there wasn't a conventional class in the Red Top School.

One of the first things that had to be done was the stoking of the stove with coal. The coal stove had more to do with school than providing heat during the winter. You see, it provided the heat for the cooking the hot meal that "Hen" insisted was good for growing students. It proved ample for heating soup and baking potatoes. "Hen" also was a great believer in the daily newspaper as a classroom teaching tool.

Each day he would read the Harrisburg Patriot to the class -' from page 1 through the comics at the end. The newspaper also provided a great way to get the teacher off the subject into a long talk about his travels - travels he made every summer to visit relatives in Chicago. He always described the "Loop," and for years I dreamed of someday seeing the "Loop" (the loop made by elevated trains in Chicago's downtown). I finally got to see the Loop on my way to Navy boot camp at Great Lakes.

Recess in the fall also meant one thing - football - and not touch football. Although he didn't insist, he did encourage the students to play tackle football and he always threw in tidbits about, ho he played at Lock Haven, when; football players "really" played the game.

Of course, anyone who ever went to one-room schoolhouse will tell you! about the outhouses. They were present at Red Top and they were cold in the winter.

He wasn't the world's greatest disciplinarian but order was always' maintained. I don't ever remember his swatting someone on the seat of the pants, but then that kind of punishment has vanished from the schools"