BY LUCIE KRISMAN
Valerie Richardson was one of Roberta Nottingham's first-grade students and would often help her grade papers after school.
That first grade class was also where she met her future husband, Dwayne.
"We had a fire drill and we were supposed to stand on the sidewalk, and all I remember is this boy didn't stop on the sidewalk and stand in line like he was supposed to," Richardson said. "We just went to school together all our life, first grade and on."
Years later, upon the closure of the Nottingham school, Richardson, who went on to work as a teacher there, said she would have liked to take one more walk through.
"I just wanted to go back in and walk through it all, just for memory lane," Richardson said.
Many residents in Eudora are feeling the same nostalgia for Nottingham Elementary and how the building and its namesake impacted their lives. A decade after the school closed, demolition has officially begun at Nottingham.
Safety measures on the outer edges of the property began last week. This coming Monday, about 1,000 bricks from Nottingham will be available at the Eudora Public Works Office for people to pick up and keep for sentimental purposes.
Eudora city staff, City Commission members and former Nottingham teachers gathered to take pictures, take the first few swings at demolishing the building and have their last few moments at the school earlier this week.
Before moving forward, many in the Nottingham community wanted to share their memories and reflect on the past.
“An inspiration to everyone”
The Nottingham Elementary, originally named Eudora Elementary School, was built in 1965.
The school got its name from Roberta Nottingham, a longtime Eudora teacher. When Nottingham was built at 15th and Elm, the location was on the complete outskirts of town, according to the school district's history. It was built for $175,000 and designed with the open classroom concept for kindergarten through third grade.
After Nottingham stopped teaching, she remained a beloved figure at the school, said Tom Jerome, a former principal.
"She was so welcoming and so humble,” Jerome said. "She continued to be a part of it and to be recognized even years after she taught there."
Roberta Nottingham walked to school every day as a teacher, and after teaching, she made a habit of visiting the school on "Nottingham Day."
Kids were selected each year on this day to have lunch with her on the stage, where she told them stories.
"She always told the kids that you could overcome anything," former teacher Vicky Hofer said. "She was just an inspiration to everyone, really."
Jerome said in his time at Nottingham, he appreciated the consistent support of the teachers as both the school and the Eudora community changed.
"I was principal for 35 years, but it's not like it was the same job for all of those years," Jerome said. "I really appreciated the support I got from the staff. They supported me all those years, and they challenged me and hopefully made me a better principal as time went on."
Former Nottingham teacher and current City Commissioner Ruth Hughs remembers the unique aspects of Nottingham fondly, such as the adoptive grandparent program that matched third-graders with nursing home residents and the Thanksgiving feast that parents often attended with their children.
"That was one of our trademarks, to make sure that families knew that we appreciated them and supported them," Hughs said. "That's one thing that's strong in Eudora, family involvement."
Hughs team-taught with Hofer at Nottingham, where they had a guinea pig for restless students to hold and a clawfoot bathtub for students to sit and read in. Today, Hughs said the teachers from Nottingham are still a community.
"We still see quite a few of the teachers that were Nottingham teachers," Hughs said. "We were the Nottingham family."
To Hofer, Nottingham was set apart by the close-knit community aspect of it.
"Our kids went to school with the kids that were in our classes," Hofer said. "It was just a small-town family feel all the way across."
West Elementary School opened in 1994 to accommodate the growth of the community and the increase of students at Nottingham. Hughs said the move was appropriate at the time.
"We just kept outgrowing Nottingham," Hughs said. "We were so crowded. It felt like a building that was extremely bursting out of its seams."
Hughs thinks K-10 and the attraction of families to Eudora's schools contributed to the large growth Nottingham experienced in its last years.
"I think they were seeking good schools and the family atmosphere of Eudora," Hughs said.
Moving forward
Nottingham Elementary closed as a school in 2009, and the building housed the Eudora Community Museum between 2011 and 2015.
Mayor Tim Reazin said the Nottingham demolition and redevelopment process has taken place over six years as the city has been talking to developers about options for retail space on the property.
The city of Eudora bought and took ownership of the property from the school district so they would have more structure and control over it, he said.
"We have been in the process for several years of trying to finish out what would be a better long-term plan for it," Reazin said. "We didn't want to knee-jerk and just throw the wrong thing or something that wouldn't be a good fit for the community."
Reazin said the decision to incorporate retail into what will later go onto that property partially came from the goal of fiscally benefiting Eudora by drawing in local shopping as opposed to residents going to Lawrence or other nearby towns to shop.
"The challenge with this being a bedroom community is that folks work in Kansas City and Lawrence, and they drive by a grocery store that they might have been shopping at for years" Reazin said. "If they're not shopping here in town, then we're losing that local sales tax percentage that we get."
Reazin thinks this increase in local retail will benefit the tax base of Eudora and the community.
"We have to grow retail to balance taxes so that residents aren't paying higher property tax," Reazin said. "We think the development of retail is a better opportunity in that space."
The sign at Laws Field was updated in mid-October with the official dates for Nottingham's demolition. The Laws Field, named after former Eudora teacher and coach Don Laws, has stopped being available for Parks & Recreation games, his daughter, Julie Stewart, said.
"He just had a lot of friends, and he loved this community," Stewart said. "My dad would have been thrilled to have a facility like we have now."
As Nottingham demolition begins, Eudora School Board member Eric Votaw said as a former student at Nottingham, he understands the bittersweet feelings that come from Eudora's education systems adjusting to Eudora's growth.
"I can still picture every room in the building," Votaw said. "It's hard for me to see the buildings I grew up with no longer in the town, having that part of history being taken from me. While it can be painful to see our past go away, it's encouraging to have great new buildings that meet our educational needs today."
The Nottingham demolition is set for completion by Dec. 31. Hughs said while the approaching tumble of the building is sad, Nottingham Elementary is survived by the memories and the family feeling in the community because of what they fostered there.
"I think that Nottingham and all the things that happened at Nottingham have shaped Eudora," Hughs said. "The sadness of seeing it torn down is one feeling, but the excitement for the newness is totally another. It was a beautiful part of Eudora's history and I'm looking forward to moving forward."
Reach reporter Lucie Krisman at eudoratimes@gmail.com.
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