Losing Landmarks - Update

Well, I finally got the chance to go up to Sarepta and Shongaloo and confirm what I had guessed in my earlier post. The looming destruction of the old Sarepta High School building will remove the final landmark from the years of E. S. Richardson as Superintendent of Webster Parish Schools. (I honestly could not remember if the old Shongaloo building was gone.)

As I said, earlier, I'm not a foe of progress and am so happy that the students in area schools have new facilities, that need for new modern educational structures is one reason the passing of the Sarepta building is worth comment.

When E. S. Richardson came to Webster Parish in 1921, the parish operated 39 separate schools for white children (the issues regarding the black students is another topic for another time.)Many of those 39 schools were ramshackle one-room buildings from the 19th century. By 1928, those 39 schools had been consolidated into 10 campuses -- Cotton Valley, Doyline, Dubberly, Evergreen, Heflin, Minden, Sarepta, Shongaloo, Sibley and Springhill -- each with a state certified high school and each with a new building. In all cases except Evergreen the new buildings were brick structures. At least two of the schools, Sarepta and Sibley, actually had two new buildings as the first new construction at both places was destroyed by fire.

The centralized schools were only one of the many radical changes Richardson brought to Webster Parish. His reforms earned the nickname the “Webster Miracle” and he went all across the country speaking at educational conferences and even the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933, describing how Webster Parish had become a model for rural schools.

In addition to his educational leadership, Richardson’s marketing skills were truly amazing. A reading of the small notebooks he kept during his years as Superintendent reveal the many sophisticated – some might even say devious – methods he used to drum up public support for his school bond issues. Techniques that varied from personally driving the back roads of Webster Parish to speak with parents of students to inviting certain couples to dinner parties because a particularly difficult civic leader was dazzled by the charming wife of a School Board member. That board member was advised to be at the dinner and make sure that his wife appeared. It worked; the skeptical civic leader became a strong booster of the new schools.

So, as the last of his construction projects passes from the scene, I guess it is fitting that the physical legacy of E. S. Richardson continued in the Webster Parish School system for 74 years after he left us to become President of Louisiana Tech. He would probably be more proud of the new building than how long his work had endured, but I did want to tip my hat to his legacy.