The Day the School Burned

I was a student in the fourth grade of Lipscomb Elementry School when the school was destroyed by fire in 1958. I recall it was Feb. 12th, Lincoln's birthday. Some school districts observed the day as a holiday but for whatever reason we were in school that day. It was a typical cold February day. The fire broke out in early afternoon while most of the students were on the playground for recess. As I recall the fire began in the boiler room which was just off the kitchen. I was playing with a group of my friends when we first noticed the smoke and the small blaze. At first we did not realize the significance of what was happening. We continued to play, pretending that we were soldiers in a war.We threw rocks at the school pretending that they were hand grenades.The fire spread quickly and as it did we instinctively moved back away from the blaze. The thing that amazes me even to this day is that there seemed to be no one in charge. In at least one instance the students were acting more rationally than the teachers. Our fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Jefferson saw the blaze and started back toward the building to retrieve her pocket book. I remember Jimmy Brown taking her by the arm and refusing to let her enter the building. (Jimmy Brown would have been 10 or 11 at that time. Mrs. Jefferson was approaching retirement age.) I remember the principal and a couple of the eighth grade boys going across the road to the WSM building to get fire extinguishers but the fire was far too advanced by that time.The fire continued to spread and black smoke billowed into the air. Panic began to set in. I recall that all the little girls were crying. I thought it silly at first that anyone would cry but soon I realized that I too was crying. By this time the heat was intense and most everyone had climbed the fence and was standing in the farm field approximately where the interstate is today.I lived on a farm at the other end of Concord Road six miles away. My Father was out feeding cattle when he saw the smoke in the sky. He later stated, "I tried to make myself believe that it was smoke from a train sitting on the track that ran near the school but I knew that it was the school on fire." He raced to us in the old 1949 Chevrolet farm truck that he drove. The old truck made a distinctive sound and I will never forget how pleasant that sound was when I heard it coming down the road that day.The good news is that everyone got out of the building and no one was injured.