Buyer hopes to keep old Middleburg school's history alive

MIDDLEBURG — For most of Saturday morning’s auction, it looked like the old Middleburg school was going to go to some mysterious out-of-town entity called Golden Nugget LLC.Don Sweeney of First Choice Auction was on the phone with a representative from Golden Nugget and every time a local would make a bid, Sweeney would signal that Golden Nugget upped it’s bid by $1,000. Perhaps Golden Nugget was going to turn it into a casino, folks were joking.But in the end, local farmer Donnie Grider let sentimentality get the best of him and offered up the winning bid of $28,500 for the school — built in 1937 by the Works Progress Administration — that includes three acres, the old barn-like gym, a newer brick building and generations of memories.As people congratulated him on the purchase and asked about his plans, Grider cracked he was “going to open up a house of ill repute.”Actually, Grider said he bought the school for his sons, Donovan and Chaz. He said he wasn’t sure what the boys would do with the property, other than try to keep it alive in some form that pays tribute to its history.“I’m sure they’ll save some of it as an institution. It’s like the last thing we’ve got left of our little village here,” Grider said.Grider attended the school until Casey County High School was created in 1963. His wife, Gwen, had her first teaching job there. Donovan and Chaz went there when it was an elementary school. Haunted by bats and a failing physical plant, Middleburg Elementary closed five years ago when Jones Park Elementary opened in nearby Yosemite. There had been some sort of school on site, including various colleges, for 130 years. A federally funded Head Start program still leases the newer building on the property each year, but nobody knows how long that will continue. A group called Middleburg School Preservation Inc. got the property for $1 from the Casey County Board of Education in 2006 with the intent of repairing the school and turning it into some community oriented facility. President Joberta Wells said the group “worked our butts off” but could not raise the necessary funds. The ice storm two years ago damaged the roof and let the rains in, and vandals have also had a field day.“It’s a mess,” Wells said.No matter what the Griders are able to accomplish, the school’s educational legacy will continue. Wells said the foundation will use the money from the sale of the property to establish a scholarship fund to help out college-bound students beginning with next year’s CCHS graduating class. Recipients will have to have attended Middleburg school or have a relative who did, Wells said.