School: Butler - Fernwold/Fernwald Memories
Contact:  Pierre Girard
Email: pgirard@visi.com
 

My mother, Audrey Lucken Girard was the teacher at the Fernwold (as she pronounced it) School until it closed. On the picture you have, the woman standing in the doorway is Lorraine Peterson Dorski. The elderly man next to her is my great-grandfather, Ole M. Johnson of Worden Twnshp and the elderly couple next to him are my great-grandparents, Gilbert and Mari Lucken who lived on Barber St in Stanley. My mother, Audrey Lucken, took the photograph. In the 1950s my parents took us kids on a trip from Chippewa Falls to see the school. The school had a gymnasium in the basement as well as a furnace room and boys and girls bathrooms with chemical toilets. Upstairs were two class rooms. When my mother taught there she was the only teacher and used one room. In the winter she would ski through the woods from the home where she was boarding to the school. If there was a snowstorm and no students showed up, she would have to stay until 1 P.M. ring the bell and then she could leave and she would get paid for that day. She had to build a fire in the furnace each morning when she got to school. One morning she found a big snake on the floor of the gym. She was deathly afraid of snakes but after she built a fire in the furnace she picked up the snake with a shovel and put it in the furnace. She knew the Reesby family well and said Mr Reesby was on the school board.