They came for their children. They came for friends. They came for themselves. All in the name of sentimentality.
Dozens of people patiently waited during the chilly noon hour Friday to snag a brick, or a few, from the demolished portion of the former Chesterton Middle School that is being repurposed into the Duneland YMCA Healthy Living Campus.
Bobbie and Rich Barber of Valparaiso were first in line to collect bricks for their kids Brent and Richelle Barber.
“They know we’re here,” Bobbie Barber said of Brent who graduated in 1987 and used to teach radio and TV classes at the high school, and his sister who graduated in 1994. Behind the Barbers Duneland School Corporation bus driver Candy Tucker, herself an alumna, was poised to collect bricks for her daughter who graduated in 2015, and her son who attended middle school on campus.
“Both my husband and I went here and graduated, and my daughter graduated from here,” she said. “It’s sad. It’s just really sad seeing it go,” Tucker added. “Sentimental is what it is.”
People were welcome to take what they wanted from a pile that had already been set aside by construction crews with the actual demolition site sectioned off with caution tape. “I said, ‘We’re not really the brick police,’” explained Amy Curtis, Duneland Family Y director of programs and partnerships. “I said, ‘Safely. Whatever you can safely carry.’”
With the help of a former classmate, 1988 Chesterton High School graduate Julie Marvel Sopata managed to totter away on her high-heeled boots with a small section of a brick wall. Michael Fisher, now of Highland, put the wall section into her arms so she could break it apart later and give a bit to each of her siblings.
“The school when we went to high school here was so sentimental,” Fisher said. “The best years of my life.” He was collecting bricks to share with his wife Candy and his brother-in-law.
Dennis Jannelle, of Porter, has ties to the campus both as a student and a decades-long employee. “I enjoyed the teachers,” he said. “I had this one teacher, he was a prankster.”
He then worked from 1976 to 2003 as a custodian in what was the cafeteria of the demolished portion of the school. “We seen the buildings being built and now we’re seeing them being torn down,” Jannelle said. He came with his wife to collect some bricks for “sentimental reasons. I’m going to put some by my doors in the bedrooms so the doors won’t swing closed,” he said of what he’ll do with the bricks.
Curtis said research into the archives of The Chesterton Tribune showed her that the first part of the building was built in 1921.
“The community leaders at the time were trying to embrace future planning, which is what we’re trying to do here now,” she said, adding that when renovations to the site are complete a time capsule including a brick from the old structure will be buried for future generations to find in another hundred years.
The site of the former CMS at 651 W. Morgan Ave. in Chesterton will take the Y’s current space from around 40,000 square feet to around 105,000. Duneland Family YMCA Board Chair Jim Trout said the Y hopes to be fully operational in the building by the middle of next year.
Co-located partners such as Jacob’s Ladder Pediatric Rehabilitation Center, Chesterton Youth Collective, Next Level Infant Aquatics, Front Porch Music, Porter-Starke Services, Make Make Pop Up Art, and North Shore Health Center aim to bring a host of services to the campus.
The Duneland School Corporation will continue operating its Early Learning Hub and administrative offices out of the east end of the campus as well as hold board meetings there.
An adjoining 20-acre park to be called Cleveland Cliffs Community Park will offer walking paths and gardens with the help of co-partners Dunes Learning Center and the Shirley Heinz Land Trust.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
