Bobcats reunite as Uniontown High alumni return home

Uniontown High School alumni gathered for an evening of sweet reminiscing. The school is gone, but the memories shared remain.

“It was a lot of fun,” recalled Jeanette Heisler Wetzel of her school days at the Uniontown School. Jeanette was a member of Uniontown’s Class of 1937. “I had a good time in school. The best thing I remember were our junior and senior plays. I don’t remember what parts I played, but I liked the shows.”

“We were so small all of us had to participate in everything. We were in band, chorus, plays and sports,” said George “Bud” Dusty Roads. “I had to play football or there wouldn’t have been enough for a team.”

Bob Wetzel, a member of the Class of 1938, recalled playing football for the Bobcats. “I played halfback. Now-a-days it’s called running back. We beat Lehman (Canton) and they didn’t like that one bit.”

Leslie Sunday, a member of the Class of 1940, said the best thing about attending Uniontown High School was “graduation,” he laughed. “There were 22 students in my graduating class.”
“We had a lot of friends from Uniontown that joined the service together,” said Ray Hickerson, a member of the Class of 1940. “Some of our closest friends were killed in the war.

“We were small enough that everybody knew everybody and we all turned out well,” added Hickerson.

“We were a small school. We had a close association,” said Doyle Murphy, Jeanette Heisler Wetzel’s classmate. “There’s nothing wrong with close association.”

“Everyone got along,” said Sunday. “Except during Halloween and then we got into some mischief.”

“We’d dump the outhouses,” admitted Hickerson. “They’d punish us by letting us out of school the next day to clean up.”

Joann Moore Fankhauser, of the Class of 1945, had six other siblings attend Uniontown School.

“It was so much fun growing up in Uniontown,” said Joann. “I enjoyed having my sisters so close.”

Two of Joann’s sisters, Edna Mae Moore Fischer of the Class of 1943, and Betty Moore Thursby from the Class of 1938, were also in attendance.

Uniontown’s first graduating class was in 1889. The last graduating class was 1957, when school districts underwent consolidation. Uniontown High School students were divided between Green, Springfield and Hartville. Hartville and portions of the Uniontown students became Lake Local Schools.

The 2008 Uniontown gathering was the school’s 36th reunion. Classes from 1948 and prior were recognized for passing their 60th graduation anniversaries.

Donna Birk Miller, a reunion committee member, said there was at least one representative from every class since 1937. Two teachers, Tom Kot and Jean Thompson, were also in attendance at the Sept. 28 reunion at Hartville Kitchen.