GATES OFFICIALLY PART OF SCITUATE HISTORY

This column originally appeared exclusively in the Scituate Mariner on Wicked Local.

Scituate’s Gates Intermediate School closed down last week as the town awaits the opening of its innovative replacement on the same grounds as the high school.

One hundred years ago when the Gates Intermediate School opened its doors for the first time, following an initial delay due to a shortage of teachers caused by America’s entry into World War I, it was acknowledged as historically significant.  “The whole town turned out that day,” says historian and former Gates teacher Bob Corbin.  “The opening of Gates was a big event,” says Corbin.   In fact, one of the pillars at the entrance to Gates contains a lined box, a time capsule that houses the following:  records of the meetings of the Scituate building committee, brand new coins from 1918, an edition of the Boston Globe, the signatures of the roughly 500 students attending Gates that very first year, a copy of the Women’s Suffragette Journal, and various business cards from people in the Scituate community.  Corbin, who is still at Gates virtually every day as a volunteer even at 85 years old is an ambassador of sorts in Scituate, having spent time in all of the Scituate Public Schools (but primarily Gates) for five decades.  “I thought the way the school year ended at Gates was shabby and nothing more than what we usually have at the end of every school year.  We should have had something to celebrate the closing.”  Then Corbin’s look turned a bit suspicious as he continued, “And it’s what is not being said that bothers me the most.  There are probably people lined up to build condos on the property, overshadowing any effort to commemorate the school.” 

There truly has been little to mark the closing of the great building that proudly stands at 327 First Parish Road aside from an effort to usher out the last classes of students, teachers packing for the move, and personnel learning where they are to be assigned for the upcoming school year and the foreseeable future.  Former long-time Gates staffers Noreen Hebert and Stacey Hendrickson were in the school last week removing hundreds of pieces of artwork decorating the walls, all painted by kids from Gates and sponsored by local families, a process of art removal that had been initiated a few years back.  Like ghosts in a building that has now undergone significant staffing changes over the past ten years, Hebert and Hendrickson wanted to return the artwork to either the people who painted them (most now adults) or to the families who sponsored them rather than watch the art be destroyed as part of the restructuring and/or demolition of the building.  “We were just trying to do something good for the community.  It was all going to be torn away,” says Hebert.    “We wanted to get the art off the walls and get it out of there.”  Adds Hebert, “We hope that with the opening of the new building there will be more of a formal recognition of the school’s closing.  As far as I’m concerned, they should have had a parade.”  Hebert, who taught Family Consumer Science for over three decades at Gates and then ended her career teaching six additional years at Scituate High School, also revealed the existence of another time capsule hidden at Gates that was placed in the building’s cupola in the year 2000.  When former custodian, Joe Eldridge, checked in on it some years later, however, the time capsule was gone.  Hebert thinks that it may have been relocated to the school’s expansive attic. 

Teachers have been busy at Gates the past couple of weeks clearing out classrooms.  Each teacher was allowed two relatively small orange bins to carry everything they would need up to their new workspace.  This meant having to throw away or take home an amazing amount of teaching materials and various supplies.  Aside from limited personal containers, teachers were also responsible for loading up separately designated orange bins with hundreds of textbooks and curriculum supplies to be brought to the new school.  All of this packing was done while teachers were trying to satisfy the educational needs of the students as the school year raced to a close, a task that is usually filled with loose ends even when not having to worry about packing materials. 

Ironically last Tuesday, former Gates history teachers Fred Freitas and Bob Corbin gave their annual presentation to students on Team Dynamite emphasizing the importance of local history in an effort to inspire young Scituate residents to carry the town’s storied past into the future. 

According to Freitas, the opening of a new school in Scituate and the closing of another has a familiar undertone.  “One recurring theme has emerged,” says Fred Freitas.  “Scituate has needed to use its school buildings over and over again.  When the new school opened in 1918, the question of what to do with the old school was answered by the Merritt Company in 1919 rolling it from in front of Gates to its position today as the Little Red Schoolhouse. When the new addition [A wing, gym, industrial arts rooms, etc.] was introduced in 1954, the building was overcrowded on the day it opened, so the Little Red Schoolhouse was used again for extra classes throughout the day.  It seems that Scituate school buildings are used over and over as change wreaks havoc on man's best laid plans.  How many Jenkins, Wampatuck, Hatherly, Gates, and Scituate High School additions have been built over the years to satisfy changing needs?  If this has been Scituate's past history,” warns Freitas, “have planners considered how Gates is going to be needed again?  If we allow ourselves to learn from history, it will be needed again.” 

Maybe when the new school opens in a few months it will be celebrated with a copy of the Scituate Mariner and the signatures of every “new” Gates student locked in a treasure chest and dropped deep into the murky waters of the vernal pool for future generations to discover.  

But a more accurate sign of the times tells me that we have forgotten why celebrating the past is equally important to building the future.