OSAGE BEND, Mo. -- With lunch served in the cook's home basement and daily Mass to open the school day, Osage Bend's public school was anything but ordinary.
"Since the community was almost entirely German Catholic, the school was treated like a Catholic school," according to the St. Margaret of Antioch Catholic Church history book.
The community's first schoolhouse in the late 1800s was a pioneer family's cabin, where the occasional visiting priest would also celebrate Mass.
At the turn of the 20th century, the first public school building was built of logs, 12-foot square with a chimney.
A larger, two-room schoolhouse was built after 1910 across from the church. It had a wood frame and tin roof.
"There was neither a post-elementary school in Osage Bend nor a feasible way to commute to Jefferson City everyday in 1941," according to the history book.
A few students lived in Jefferson City at St. Mary's Hospital, where they worked for room and board, allowing them to attend St. Peter's High School. Jerry Schmidt eventually became a doctor as a result of the experience.
By 1946, the school enrollment was 60.
Students walked or rode horses to school, with the occasional parent transporting in a buggy or wagon.
Osage Bend got its first school bus in 1947. It was an international panel truck, formerly a bottle gas truck, customized to hold 15 students.
Former teacher Anstine (Veit) Buechter recalled in the 1950s school was closed only one day in five years.
"Not that it didn't snow more than one day, it was just too difficult to let everyone know that school was not in session," Buechter wrote in the history book.
Hot lunches, at a cost of 10 cents, were introduced in the early 1950s, served at the home of Mary Bode in her basement. Parents donated fresh and canned food, and a local dairyman sold them milk. Government food commodities supplemented the meals.
The first high school graduating class was 1959, as the Osage Bend school sent students to Westphalia.
The Cole County School District in April 1959 proposed a bond issue for a four-classroom school, with a cafeteria and meeting room. Only one vote from Osage Bend was against it, but it was defeated by the rest of the district's voters.
Three years later, a bond issue was passed, and a two-classroom, brick schoolhouse with a cafeteria was built.
When the reorganized school district decided to build a centrally located high school to serve students from Osage Bend, St. Thomas, Wardsville and Taos, Osage Bend was considered. However, the decision went to Wardsville.
After 1965, high school students from Osage Bend attended Blair Oaks High School.
On May 6, 1967, the Jefferson City Post Tribune reported: "The small Cole County R-II Osage Bend School could not cope with the flood of new parochial students today. The children were sent home for the day after the Taos Volunteer Fire Department inspected the Osage Bend Hall. The Osage Bend School received 150 new enrollees today after getting 75 from Wardsville last Friday."
In 1969, seventh- and eighth-grade students attended Blair Oaks and the first kindergarten class was bused to St. Francis Xavier School in Taos, along with all other kindergarteners in the Cole County R-2 School District.
In 1974, Osage Bend Elementary School attendance continued to climb. So another district bond issue was passed to build a new elementary school close to Blair Oaks High School.
"Father Hilke was adamant about keeping the students at Osage Bend, across the road from the St. Margaret Church, where Mass could be said daily for the students," according to the book.
Fifth- and sixth-graders attended school at the Wardsville site in trailers while the remaining 70 students in first through fourth grades continued at Osage Bend for the school's last year.
History shared at event
The history of the Great Bend in the Osage River and the history of St. Margaret of Antioch Catholic Church will be shared at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the church in Osage Bend.
This is the latest installment of the Cole County Historical Society's Getting To Know Our Communities series.
Those who attend are encouraged to bring photographs, memorabilia, scrapbooks and family histories.
Call 573-635-1850 for more information.