SHARON CENTER

Imagine sitting down at a school board meeting and glancing over the agenda. At the top is the school’s mission statement: To develop unique, original, imaginative and fertile personalities.

During the meeting, the superintendent talks about how the school can better embody its ideal, which is to counteract the materialistic, over-specialized, over-organized, superficial, machine-like tendencies of our modern workforce and lifestyles.

Name this school.

Tricky, isn’t it. Sounds like an arts academy, charter school, or Montessori school, one of those one-off types that favors creativity and individuality over standardization. Perhaps it’s a home school assistance program or private school.

Nope. Its Sharon High School, circa 1928.

These unconventional, visionary ideas are those of George McKinley Ludwig, a Pennsylvania-born preacher who arrived in Sharon Center in fall 1924, having been hired as superintendent for Sharon High School, an experimental project just a few years younger than he was.

When the original Sharon High School building was constructed in 1899, rural high schools weren’t the norm. The community needed to be convinced to give it a go; the cost to build and run a school was daunting, and it would be the first of its kind in Johnson County. But the alternative was to send area students to Iowa City for high school, which had its own downsides.

“We want to educate our children right here at home,” John Winborn, a member of the township high school association said upon Ludwig’s arrival. “If we send them to town, we will lose them to the community forever.”

The original Sharon High School building opened to students in January 1900, and immediately it became a meeting place for various groups in the community. However, it wasn’t long before high costs and low enrollment caused it hardship, and the schoolhouse ceased operation in 1912-13.

The Masonic Lodge purchased the building in 1918, and students continued their education in spaces around town.

But with Ludwig’s arrival, things changed.

He was “dynamic and transformational,” “a master at networking and meeting greater community needs,” historian Dave Jackson writes.

Quickly Ludwig, supported by wife Alice, produced a local musical performance, which begat organization of a community band. Soon the “Haymaker’s Band” of Sharon Center was performing in surrounding communities, raising funds for Sharon High School everywhere it went.

Thanks to Ludwig, enrollment grew, engagement soared, and in 1926 the Sharon High School building underwent a significant remodel that doubled classroom space. Students moved back in, 11th and 12th grades were added, more teachers were hired, and the curriculum was expanded so that the school could become a fully accredited four-year high school.

“The contributions of George M. and Alice Ludwig served as the new beginnings and springboard for two decades of great growth and improvement of the Sharon High School, including the new school that was constructed and opened in 1930,” Jackson writes.

In late 1929 the Ludwigs left Sharon Center. Ludwig was appointed superintendent at Oxford, then Tiffin, where he stayed for many years. He would later serve two terms in the Iowa Legislature representing Johnson County; he passed away in 1959 at the age of 63.

Sharon High School operated out of the new building from 1930-1944. It was then closed and the new building torn down.

The original 1899 Sharon High School building remains, its walls infused with Ludwig’s progressive ideas.

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Since 2019 there has been a concentrated effort to restore and preserve the original Sharon High School schoolhouse. That’s when the foundation broke down, and the community realized they would have to put time and money into the structure if they wanted to keep it around.

And they do want to keep it around; it has been a gathering place for decades, where they played games, watched plays, and made sandwiches for the July 4 celebration. Functioning school or not, the schoolhouse matters to the people of Sharon Center.

And perhaps also to the people of Iowa. In 2020 it was added to the Most Endangered Properties in Iowa list; it’s one of the state’s last remaining two-room, two-story schoolhouses, and its history is a significant part of the state’s education story.

The Friends of Historic Sharon High School and Community Center, Inc. continue to raise funds and make progress on the shoring up the schoolhouse. The foundation and front entrance have been replaced, and interior renovations are planned. Work is progressing toward the creation of a museum on the second floor.

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It was in doing research for the museum’s collections that something interesting happened.

Last year, Jackson, who is on the Collections Committee for the Friends of Historic Sharon High School, wondered if he could locate any of Ludwig’s decedents for information. Through an internet search he found a George Ludwig in Virginia who led a Boy Scout troop; Jackson sent him an email.

“Within five minutes he responds,” Jackson recounts. “Five minutes. ‘We have boxes for you.’”

As it turned out, the Virginian is a decedent of the former Sharon superintendent, who happened to be a meticulous recordkeeper. The family had been storing 30 banker boxes of letters, photos, and detailed notes for decades, unsure of what to do with it all.

Getting their hands on all that ephemera was a delightful surprise.

“Normally everything would be thrown in a dumpster because they didn’t know who was who,” Roger Stutzman, also a Friend of Historic Sharon High School, says, marveling that the next two generations didn’t throw it out, even though it must have born little connection to their lives in various other states.

“It was a real blessing to connect to the several Ludwig grandchildren who are spread throughout the country,” Jackson says. The boxes of materials “provide great details that will inform our facility restoration and the rich history of the school.”

The discovery of “the stuff” is helping the Friends of Historic Sharon High School in two different ways. First, they want to tell the story of Sharon High School in an engaging way that brings across the “rich history of how the rural high school ‘experiment’ was so critical to the sustainability of the Sharon Center community,” as Jackson says. Finding a host of “little nuances” in the photos and letters helps them build a detailed and complete narrative that will capture the eyes and imaginations of current and future generations.

Second, they are physically restoring the school, inside and out. Changes have been made over the last 100 years, and without photographic evidence, it is hard to know what is original to the school – the tables? The blackboard? The doors and windows? Fortunately, the Ludwig family retained images that answer a lot of questions.

“We hadn’t seen any pictures inside the school, so suddenly we had pictures inside,” Cheryne Yoder, also a Friend, says. “It corroborated that the blackboard was the same, the lights were the same, and there is one [original] table [still] at the school.”

The boxes are an exciting and significant find, and “the Ludwig collection of documents and photographs of the day will inform our work for many years to come,” Jackson says.

While the schoolhouse museum may still be years away, photos and documents from the Ludwig collection will be viewable in Sharon Center on July 4 inside a display trailer as part of the town’s Independence Day activities. Come out to the parade, which starts at noon, and stay for the BBQ Pork and Potluck at 1 p.m. at the Sharon High School schoolhouse. Donations will be accepted to support restoration efforts at the event.