Last week I wrote in general about the school consolidation movement in Missouri and more specifically about the consolidation of the Bois D'Arc and Ash Grove Schools in Greene County. Another Greene County school consolidation that I'm personally familiar with is the consolidation of the Hickory Barren School into the Fair Grove district, because I was attending Fair Grove Elementary at the time.
Greene County began a school consolidation movement at least as early as the 1940s, probably earlier, and Hickory Barren being taken in by Fair Grove was specifically discussed at least as early as 1950. At that time, the proposal was that Hickory Barren and Liberty in Greene County and New Garden, just across the line in Dallas County, would all be consolidated with Fair Grove. Taking in Hickory Barren, however, was rejected by Fair Grove patrons. (Not sure about Liberty and New Garden. They did consolidate with Fair Grove, but I'm not sure whether it was at this time.)
What to do with the Hickory Barren district was discussed for a couple of more years, before it was once again slated to be consolidated with Fair Grove if voters of both districts approved. The vote was held in the spring of 1954, and this time it passed.
An election to select a new school board for the consolidated district was set for the summer of 1954, and a controversy arose when the names of seven women from the Hickory Barren district were placed on the ballot, apparently without their knowledge or consent. The women included Mrs. Sue Kesterson, Mrs. Mary Kesterson, Mrs. James Roberts, Mrs. Paul Stafford, Mrs. Vivian Weber, Mrs. Evelyn Israel, and Mrs. John R. Wood. Sue Kesterson told a Springfield newspaper at the time that she and the other women did not want to serve as board members and that she thought they had been nominated by "enemies of Hickory Barren" just to stir up trouble by making Fair Grove patrons think that the people of the old Hickory Barren district were trying to take over the Fair Grove School Board. She said this was most definitely not the case.
Fair Grove superintendent Wensey Marsh went to the county superintendent, Paul Alan Hale, to try to get the names of the women removed from the ballot, but Hale said he couldn't do it even if he wanted to because it was too late.
The dispute resolved itself when the top six vote-getters in the election, held in early July, were all men. When the 1954-55 school year started a month or so later, the former Hickory Barren kids came to Fair Grove. I was in third grade at the time.
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