Fond memories of Northwood

I lived close enough to Northwood that I could let my flattop freeze without risking frostbite. I'd wet my hair on winter mornings and comb it straight up in front. Then I'd walk to the school from my house on Gulf Road in Elyria — I could get there easily in under two minutes — and arrive with a tiny picket fence atop my head. Once inside, I'd show it off by rocking it back and forth with my fingertips. Cool, in more than one way. Such insignificance from so long ago, I confess, but the memory of it leaped into my mind when I read Tuesday about the sale of Northwood, a middle school before it closed this year and a junior high when last I attended it as a ninth grader in 1966. A new Northwood Middle School on Abbe Road has replaced it, and the buyer of the old one plans to move a day care there from Lorain and is mulling what else she might do with it. What it did for me was much more than let me execute my picket-fence trick. It also put me in closer contact with the kids in the neighborhood and the people who worked at the school and helped me understand, although not until I grew up, just how explosively Elyria grew between 1950 and 1970, when the city's population jumped 76 percent. In those days I took it for granted that kids were everywhere. My family's house and the five others closest to it on the west side of Gulf boasted a total of at least 24 children, although I'm pretty sure some of the 13 Schlather kids were no longer at home during the eight or so years that I lived nearby. Our house served as a way station for Northwood students from the larger neighborhood. They would stop by before school. Sometimes we just chatted. Other times we prepared for the day. I particularly recall my late brother Ward and a classmate going over spelling words before tests. After school, in the sixth grade, I often waited for my teacher, Wanda Walters, to show up in the parking lot. Why she was willing to talk rather than leave immediately I'm not quite sure, although she had a son in college. Whatever her reason, I was delighted that she thought I was worth her time. No Northwood existed on Gulf Road when my parents moved back to their hometown Elyria from Parma Heights. I went to Ely School at Gulf and Ohio Street in the first, second and third grade and part of fourth. Northwood opened then, in 1960, as a kindergarten through sixth grade school. A second phase of construction tripled its size, and it opened as a junior high in 1964. Like the kids who were everywhere in my life in those days, so was expansion. Two lanes were added to Gulf, making it a four-lane road. The state Route 57 bypass was built within sight of my house. A coliseum was added to Elyria Catholic High School across Gulf from my house. Enrollment in Elyria Schools was expanding, too, eventually peaking at roughly 14,000 students, district spokeswoman Amy Higgins told me Friday. Enough to justify construction of a second high school, Elyria West, and operation of 17 elementary schools and five junior highs as well. In the 1970s, though, Elyria's growth slowed significantly, although racial integration of newly established neighborhoods began. Ever since the '80s, the city's population has been declining, albeit slowly, from 57,538 in 1980 to an estimated 53,757 last year. Elyria Schools' enrollment has dropped steeply, to less than half of 14,000. The district's last pre-pandemic state report card, for the 2018-19 academic year, listed enrollment at just above 6,050 students. Such a decline made consolidation a practical response, and the district will have only six schools when its ongoing building project is completed: one high school, three kindergarten through eighth grade schools (Eastern Heights, Northwood and Westwood), a K-4 school (Ely) and preschool-4 school (Hamilton). The school board has yet to decide what to do with the preschool known as the Elyria Early Childhood Village and the district's administration offices, both of which are now at the former West High on Griswold Road. Fewer schools inevitably mean fewer neighborhoods with their own school, a tradeoff necessary to educate a much smaller number of kids at a reasonable cost. Still, the neighborhood school encouraged its neighbors to embrace education, and I was lucky enough to experience the ultimate in neighborhood schooling, a school literally next door. Andy Young is editor emeritus of The Chronicle-Telegram. Contact him at (440) 329-7111 or ayoung@chroniclet.com.