The Little White Schoolhouse

“When one door closes, another one usually opens,”
Mark Matzinger philosophized in the Sentinel in 2003.

The following is from the book
“The Story of Thornby: How Ordinary People Took on Government” by Sandra Walters, soon to be published.

In Enterprise, that door opened into a historic school building. Soon after flames consumed the Thornby house, the Volusia County School Board made the Enterprise Preservation Society an offer it didn’t want to refuse — the 1936-era, two-story Enterprise Elementary School building. No longer used for classes, “We knew that we couldn’t tear it down because of its historic value, but its location within the school campus combined with [other factors] created a very expensive dilemma,” says Saralee Morrissey, then Director of Facilities Services for the Volusia County School Board. Although EPS and the school board had been exploring the building’s possibilities for some time, after the Thornby house was destroyed, the notion of a historic schoolhouse museum rising like a phoenix from its ashes won instant acclaim from EPS, community members and the papers. In his column about the project, the Sentinel’s Mike Lafferty called EPS “a very dedicated group of people determined to save what is left of the historic community.”

In March 2004, the school board generously transferred title to “Building 8” to the Enterprise Preservation Society. “Saving the schoolhouse ended up being a win-win for both the community and school district,” Morrissey remarked, explaining that the school district was able to assist in the relocation of the building and then proceed with much-needed improvements at the current school campus.

Ahead lay years of more (and harder) work than anyone envisioned — fund-raising, grant applications, more fund-raising, moving the building, and more fund-raising. Through it all, pride of ownership, combined with dreams of a future community-centered museum and meeting space, re-created period classroom, research/archive facility, and an EPS office kept the community’s sunken spirits lifted.

Update: After the school board donated the schoolhouse, it had to be moved offsite from the elementary school campus. Roy and Sandy Walters donated funds to the Society to buy a lot on Main St. and that is where the building was moved. It is through Volusia ECHO grant funds that all this work is being done but EPS has to match the ECHO grant funds with community fund-raising like the Old Florida Festival-the biggest fund-raiser. (and other fund-raisers like the community yard sale, fish fry, wine and chocolate fest, and the Festival of Tables)