Written by: Marion Pesheck True

“I, Marion Pesheck True, moved to this very house I live in now, in 1937. Four of us kids went to Conner School that fall. Older kids went to high school in Albany and a younger sister was still at home.

“Conner School was a one room school with 30 kids, all grades, and one teacher. I was in 4th grade when I started at Conner School. The school I had gone to in North Dakota taught us to read by sight, not by phonics. So as I listened to the teacher teaching phonics to the first and second grades, I learned them too. That is one good thing about one-room learning. We had a softball team at school and would walk as a group to Dever School about 2 miles away to play their team. I even earned a letter C for my part in the team.

“My family lived 3/4 of a mile from Conner School and we walked in all kinds of weather. We even picked tomatoes (we raised them as a cannery crop) before going to school in the morning and again when we got home from school.

“The one-room school house got too crowded when more kids came to school and another teacher was hired. A curtain was strung across the middle of the school, making 2 rooms; one the lower grades and one the upper grades. The 7th and 8th grades were bused to Albany. The year I went to school in the 7th grade, 1941, they built a 2-room school for 8 grades. So I was an 8th grader in the new school. I was glad to be in the country school that year instead of going to town school.

“In 1942 I graduated from Conner School (8th grade). Also, George Atchison, Verle Lamb, Raymond Gwinnette and Lloyd Lovejoy. My two younger sisters graduated from 8th grade and went to Albany High School. In 1958 my cousin, Carroll Larabee’s daughter Kathy Larrabee Kennedy was to start first grade in Conner school. The school board chose to consolidate Conner School with Jefferson School. So since then this area is in the Jefferson School District. Kathy and her siblings graduated from Jefferson as did Perry Davis, David Harnisch and his sisters, and Bill Case and his sons and daughters.

“Now I am back in the farm house where I lived when my family first moved to Oregon. Perry Davis is still my neighbor as is David Harnisch, Dee Chambers, Bill Case and Lynn Hoefer.

“After the school consolidated with Jefferson, the building was sold and made into a home. It has changed owners several times. The outside is the same, but the inside is very nice and there is an inside stairway to a balcony for a bedroom.

“The tall fir tree that grew in the yard has been cut down before it fell. That was a land mark because it was so old.”