1999-2005 ARCHIVES
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LISA
FERNANDEZ/REGISTER PHOTOS
Donna
Love, office manager at Moulton Extended Learning Center, holds a
photo of Emma Case Moulton, the school's namesake. She has been
working for five years to uncover details about the school's
history.
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Education
Uncovering Moulton's past
By LAURA
PIEPER REGISTER STAFF WRITER March 22, 2005
Moulton Extended Learning Center office manager Donna Love continues to
piece together the puzzle of the school's history. Each time she thinks
she has reached a dead end, another clue pops up to guide her to a new
piece.
"One clue leads to the next, and you just keep following
them," she said.
Love, a genealogist, began her research project
five years ago during the building's renovation at 1541 Eighth St. An
envelope of photos and other artifacts sent to a former principal piqued
the interest of then-principal Deb Gettys.
"She said, 'You like history, you take this stuff and do whatever you
can with it' - that's all I needed," Love said.
She researched the
school's namesake, Emma Case Moulton, as well as the building itself,
which used to be North High School, and other tidbits of the school's
history. She then turned the material into a 17-minute PowerPoint
presentation that she plans to display in a kiosk in the school's
lobby.
"It's been so much fun," Love said.
She started with photographs sent by former teacher Mary Eaton, who's
now a nun in Dubuque. Love examined books and other materials of former
North High School principal and historian Robert Denny.
"Rather
than reinvent the wheel, I started with his research," she
said.
While reviewing his work, she discovered that he mislabeled
an old photograph of the original North High School, the current site of
Moulton, as Forest Home School. Love recognized the house behind the
building in the photograph as one she looked at every day across the
street.
"That was my favorite find," she said.
One of the school's
biggest mysteries was which students were pictured in a mural titled
"Brothers All Are We," which hangs in the school lobby. Love knew the
teacher in the painting was Margaret Cannom, who died of malaria in
Jerusalem in 1968. The staff at the time commissioned the painting in 1969
in memory of Cannom.
Love learned the names of two of the six
students pictured with Cannom: Liz Frazier and Michael English. After The
Des Moines Register's Community Publications published an article seeking
the names of the other students, a grandmother told Love she could
probably identify the children if she saw a photograph of them. It was
then that Love remembered she had some photos of the children posed
underneath the painting. The woman was able to identify five of the six
children.
Another person recognized a photograph of the artist, Beth Knotts, and
told Love how to get in touch with Knotts. The artist was able to find her
sketchbook from the project, which contained the children's names: Liz
Frazier, Christine Donahue, Kenneth Calhoun, Debbie Brown, Mike English
and Vance Singleton.
Love plans to hang a plaque with their names
by the mural so they will never again be forgotten.
"After all this
work, I'd just love to meet and talk with them," Love said, but Calhoun is
deceased and she has not been able to contact Donahue or Brown.
Another unique find was photographs and information on the Open Air
School, which was housed in an old tuberculosis hospital. Open-air schools
were a popular concept in the early 20th century. The philosophy included
hot lunches, which were unheard of at that time, one-hour rest periods for
all students and open windows year-round.
Love is waiting on an
estimate from an audio company for professional sound and push-button
technology for the kiosk. She plans to have CDs made of the presentation
to sell as a fund-raiser to pay for the audio work.
The kiosk has been built and sits in a corner of the lobby near the
mural. Love designed the wooden display cabinet, which includes carved
images of children, and Iowa Prison Industries built it.
"I think
its going to be really cool," Principal Al Burrows said. "I think she's
done a really good job getting all the information and putting it into a
presentation people can see. I can't wait until the kiosk is
going."
Love said she hopes the kiosk will be up and running before
school begins in July.
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