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Frank Bartels is the only remaining member now of a school board formerly
consisting of him, Frank Rackett, Jay Doxtator, and John Buikema,
many of who had served for at least 20 years. 40 in the case of
Frank Rackett. It was the end of an era in the sense the composition
of the school board would never again be as stable.
Although three elementary schools would be added from 1949 to 1954, and those expanded from time to time, the high school was largely complete by 1948. There would be a couple of additions to the high school building, and the addition of the physical education building in about 1957, but the area around Godwin was beginning to fill up, and the student population would no longer grow the way it had up to 1948. But no doubt many of the school board members had simply had enough. Frank Rackett was 84 when he finished his last term as a school board member in 1947. Most of the farms around godwin were gone, or in the process of being platted. It was a different world. While the area around godwin would be stable for another 10 years or so, a more global economy would produce changes after about 1960, and godwin would change with it. |