Henderson history: Black school later majored in treating addiction
The Henderson County Training School opened in 1936 on U.S. 60-East to educate Blacks and lasted nearly a quarter-century. The building had a longer life, however, as an addiction treatment facility.
The first mention of it came in The Gleaner of March 11, 1936, which reported work on it was to begin soon. “It will be a consolidated school for colored pupils west of Spottsville, and the estimated cost is $14,000. The Humber Lumber company has been awarded the contract to build this structure.”
The federal government funded 45 percent of the cost through the Public Works Administration, a New Deal agency that helped fund 7,488 schools in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Several other Henderson County schools also were partially funded by the PWA.
Dedication of the building originally was set for Sept. 6, 1936, but an item in The Gleaner’s Brevities of Sept. 5 noted that “devotional service” had been postponed. “The picnic at Langley’s Grove, however, will be held today and a basket dinner will be spread on the grounds.”
There is no microfilm of The Gleaner from October 1936, so I had to rely on Jack Hudgions’ synopsis of events that month, which appeared in The Gleaner of Aug. 16, 1952. Hudgions noted the school formally opened Oct. 9. “The brick structure … cost $12,800 with $7,040 supplied by county and $5,760 by the PWA. Grounds bought by school board.”
I’ve been unable to uncover much information about the school. What I have found, however, indicates the school played an outsized role in Black education here.
My best information comes from the Kentucky Public School Directory 1937-38, which notes the Henderson County School District had 654 Black students that year and 184 of them attended the Henderson County Training School. They were all in elementary grades and they had five teachers.
The only teacher I’ve been able to identify was Addie Greene, although I’m not sure what grades or years she taught. I’ve also seen obituaries of several former students.
The school lasted until 1959, judging from a Gleaner story of March 29, 1960, in which Magistrate Eugene Chaney made a case to Henderson Fiscal Court that the county should acquire the building and convert it into a rest home to replace the county farm near Corydon.
The school district was getting ready to auction several unneeded school properties; fiscal court was under the gun because the county farm – which historically housed the aged and indigent – needed expensive repairs to its furnace.
Chaney noted the school was built into the slope so there were ground-floor entrances on both levels. With extensive repairs and remodeling, he said, the classrooms could be cut up into bedrooms to house about 32.The Gleaner of May 27 reported the county had bought the property for $100. That was the only bid. “It was obvious that no one wished to bid against the county since the use to which the abandoned colored school would be put was well known.”
County officials originally had asked the Henderson County School District about donating the building and its six acres, but the attorney general’s office said that would not conform with state law.
Renovation work cost about $40,000, according to a Jan. 31, 1961, story about a Jan. 29 open house at the facility that drew more than 900 people. Local residents, businesses, and service clubs donated many of the furnishings.
The facility was named Walker Rest Home because Mr. and Mrs. R.G. Walker initially leased the building from the county. It had a capacity of 28 beds.
It lasted only a decade, however. It closed June 1, 1970, because of inability to meet state requirements for a rest home, according to The Gleaner of June 30, which reported it was to become the offices of the Henderson-Union-Webster Development Council.
That agency, which oversaw a wide range of activities such as Head Start and On the Job Training, occupied the building free of charge. That allowed HUW to meet the matching funds requirement for the federal grants it used.That lasted only a short time. Fifty years ago, Ken Seiberte of the Green River Comprehensive Care Center, asked for a one-year lease from fiscal court in order to provide a place to help alcoholics.
“We are interested in a five-day drying out program,” he said in the July 9, 1974, Gleaner. “We presently have no places to deal with females and the halfway houses are not appropriate for some alcohol problems.”
Fiscal court granted a one-year lease a week later, according to the July 16 issue. The $1 lease meant the agency had to pay for utilities, maintenance and minor repair costs. The agency over-optimistically hoped to have it open by the end of 1974.
Meanwhile, HUW was subsumed by Audubon Area Community Services Inc. in February 1975 when it merged with the Owensboro Area Economic Development Council. The merged agency was temporarily housed in the old school building. But that apparently didn’t last long.
The alcohol treatment facility opened its doors Nov. 17, 1975, according to The Gleaner of Nov. 14, and by that time the parent agency was the Green River Comprehensive Care Center.
“It’s taken us over a year to get the SID center in operation,” said Margarita Reeves, drug and alcohol coordinator. (SID stood for Situation, Identification and Disposition.) She estimated there were about 6,000 alcoholics in the seven-county Green River area.
The idea, she said, was to get alcoholics through initial withdrawal symptoms and then begin counseling.
By 1984, the facility was called Regional Alcohol Resource, better known as RAR. The Gleaner of Aug. 7, 1984, reported fiscal court’s offer to allow the Children’s Regional Psychiatric Hospital to be built there, although it eventually was built in Owensboro.
The Gleaner of Aug. 27, 1989, noted the facility’s name was changing again -- to Regional Addiction Resource – to better reflect society’s substance abuse problems and that the length of treatment had expanded to 30 days. At that time nearly half of the facility’s patients were there under court order.
That story also noted the facility had received lowered ceilings, new lobby furniture, repainting, wallpaper, and new carpets. A Dec. 13 Gleaner story noted a new roof, new furnace, and new air conditioning system had been added to that list for a total of about $45,000 worth of improvements.
When the county was getting ready to sell the property, the parent agency was RiverValley Behavioral Health. It vacated in December 2001, according to The Gleaner of March 13, 2002.
Madisonville businessman Eddie Ford bought the property at auction for $105,000, according to the May 18 Gleaner. Ford had not yet made up his mind how he was going to use the six acres but said one possibility was to build a house there, since his daughter lived nearby.
The school was razed later in 2002. On June 10, 2004, the Henderson City-County Planning Commission approved the plat of Hugh Stone’s Copperstone subdivision there. Three houses – 6341; 6351 and 6361 U.S. 60-East -- currently occupy the grounds of the former Henderson County Training School.
100 YEARS AGO
Consolidation of schools in the Dixie area prompted the Henderson County School District to sell the last of three buildings that were no longer needed, according to The Gleaner of July 11, 1924.
The Crook school was sold first, followed “by the one at Russells,” which required some negotiating. The final school building sold was the Columbia.
“With them now out of the way (Superintendent N.O. Kimbler) can concentrate on the remodeling of the Dixie building, to which will be added two rooms, to accommodate the increased attendance from the consolidated district.”
75 YEARS AGO
The Henderson County Board of Education was in turmoil about what to do with the old school at Brookstown, according to The Gleaner of July 10, 1949.
Brookstown was a community of mostly Blacks on U.S. 60-West at the city limits.
The school board had gotten crossways with the community when it leased the building for one year to a firm that wanted to place advertising signs on it. Superintendent Carl Vincent pointed out the school board had earlier dedicated the site as a community center or church for the Black community.
The superintendent said the building was not being used for either of those purposes. “In fact,” Vincent said, “the house is now being rented out as living quarters by someone unknown to the board.”
If a Black organization were formed, Vincent said, the school board could provide a deed, but that deed would contain a reversion clause voiding it if the property were not used for a community center or church.
25 YEARS AGO
Henderson residents calling the 911 emergency dispatch number were getting busy signals, according to The Gleaner of July 13, 1999.
The first glitch occurred in the afternoon of July 6, when the system malfunctioned for several hours. Less than a week later the system was down for about 40 minutes.
Both outages were caused by equipment malfunctions.
Readers of The Gleaner can reach Frank Boyett at YesNews42@yahoo.com.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Henderson history: Black school later majored in treating addiction
