School still lives on

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — The old Iowana School may be long gone, but it's not forgotten.

Just ask Charles Beardsley, Bob Whitman, Sandy Kanger, Frances Williams or Susan Claar.

Barb Lett Walter remembers. She lived next door.

Ivan Pierson and Betty Shomshor remember Iowana, and they didn't even go there.

Beardsley said he attended the small country school north of the Council Bluffs city limits in the 1950s, but “I cannot even find any history of it being a school.”

Whitman confirms, “Oh, yes, there certainly was an Iowana School, exactly where you placed it,” on Old Lincoln Highway near Iowana Lane, north of Council Bluffs.

Whitman has lived in North Carolina for 44 years, but the Raleigh resident attended Iowana with his three brothers in the 1930s, and “we all went to Abraham Lincoln High School.”

Kanger attended Iowana in the late 1950s and still lives in Council Bluffs.

Walter also knows about Iowana.

“I started kindergarten at Iowana in 1957,” she said.

The school was built on property purchased from her parents, she said.

Iowana was just one of the schools in Lake Township.

The others were Woodland School near Lime Kiln Road, Vineland School on Lime Kiln Road, and Rainbow School near Mynster Springs Road and Monument Road. Shomshor added Lakeview School to the list.

“My dad was director of the Woodland and Rainbow Schools,” Shomshor said. She went to both of those schools.

Why so many small schools so close together?

“There were no buses, and the schools were located to try to keep the distance down to two miles for everybody,” Whitman said.

“I also went to Iowana School,” said Claar, who lives in Crescent. “However, it had been renamed Lake Central.”

That was after the schools were consolidated in 1961.

“A new school was built high on the hill above the old Iowana school,” Kanger said. “It was renamed Lake Central. Later it was just Lake School.”

“Lake School was built when I was in the fourth grade,” Walter said. “My mom was asked to name it.”

The original Iowana became the lunchroom, and Lake Central was used for classrooms.

The school seemed to have a number of names over the years. Whitman said Iowana used to be Barrett School, named for an area settler, but was renamed in the late 1930s or early 1940s after a contest.

“One of my close friends, Alta Corneilson, won.

“It was quite an honor,” Whitman said.

Beardsley remembered the name “Iowana” over the school's front door, as well as the rope used to ring the school's bell.

“We all got to take our turn pulling the rope on the bell to make it clang,” Kanger said.

Kanger added that Beardsley didn't mention one important fact: “There were no bathrooms in the schools.

“The boys' outhouse was on one side of the playground and the girls' on the opposite side.

Kanger recalled, “It got pretty cold out there in the winter.”

District records show Lake Township schools became part of the Council Bluffs school system in 1966.

“They took the seventh and eighth grades out of Lake, and we were bused to junior high at Longfellow,” Kanger recalled.

Iowana was demolished in the late 1970s, according to Shomshor.

Nothing remains of the original Iowana school building but a set of concrete steps. The Lake School built to replace Iowana on the hill at Old Lincoln Highway near Iowana Lane now houses Heartland Therapeutic School.

A few people have relics from Iowana School.

“My younger brother, Rod, or his son has the old school bell that hung in the vestibule,” Whitman said.

And Walter has a painting of the old Iowana school, painted when the school was in its prime.

“I wonder if there would be anyone interested in a reunion for those who attended any of these old schools?” Kanger asked.

“You bet I'd go,” Walter said.

Although Shomshor didn't attend Iowana, Walter said she could attend, too.

“That was where everything took place,” she said. “We were one big family then.”

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