(The following was written by Faye and Harold Morland, and is reprinted from “The Epoch of the Park Street School 1853-1964 and Grove City, Ohio”.  Any opinions made in the article are from the author.)

You have explored the region and discovered some things about it before Grove City and the school existed. Furthermore, you have read of the birth and some of the development of the City of Grove City and of the Park Street Elementary School. You’ve seen the birth and development of the seventeenth largest school district in the state – the South-Western City School District – the old Park Street Elementary School becoming a part of it.

This giant school district makes for more efficiency by the consolidation, as previously in 1920 did the consolidation of Grove City-Jackson Township. The efficiency is for the education of your children not only in the maximum value return for your dollar spent but also in maximum facility and teacher personnel ability to give a more thorough education to your children in the same amount of time.

This school district provides 461 teachers, 17 elementary schools, 3 high schools, and in the building stage 3 new junior high schools to give your 13,300 children now attending school a chance to learn how to think logically so that they may secure a better life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This school district is now doing more for your 13,300 children than the log school did in 1853 with one teacher and 60 pupils. Would you want to revolute to the 1853 facilities and conditions for your children?

The Park Street Elementary School by means of physical deterioration and functional obsolescence is now being replaced by more efficient schools for the training of the minds of your children.

This old school will not quickly be forgotten, because from it came the trained mind, the spirit, the soul. Call it what you will. It was in each one of us when we left the school, a typical American school. We, nearly 18,000, who trained our minds here since 1853, our books having been the grindstone and our faithful teachers having been the guides, came forth and put into practice with millions of other trained minds from many other typical American schools those things that we learned. With free ambitions and desires we consolidated our resourceful minds and used this great energy through many discoveries, inventions and ways of living to weld a mighty nation together for a better life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These trained minds are the lasting school, for the spirit, the soul, and the mind never dies. It passes on to future generations and into the metaphysical world from whence it came.

However, to that part of the old school, the bricks and stone, like that part of the body called the soma plasm which must go, and to the faithful teachers who will move elsewhere, we salute you for your help and guidance.

Now that this old school site is about to go, we suggest that a boulder be placed on the front of Lot Number 32 with the old school bell securely mounted and protected on top of the boulder and a bronze tablet secured to the front giving the following information:

“Site of the first school in Grove City.
A one-room log building erected in 1853
Replaced by a two-room frame structure in 1870
Replaced by a four-room brick building in 1888
With two rooms added in 1902
and two more rooms added in 1922

Site sold in 1964.”

A reservation should be made in the deed by the school board assuring that the above memorial will remain on the property for all time.

Carry on Spirit

Pax vobiscum