Lavon School

Earl Price attended and remembered how the building went up. His family arrived in September 1940, while it was under construction, and classes met in Calahan's grocery across the street, where pupils watched the crew through the store windows. The gym had hardwood floors, and no one could wear street shoes on them. A stage stood east of the gym, and the lunchroom was on the south side. When Sam Rayburn dedicated the school in September 1941, he warned the students that relations with Japan were not going well. Mr. Hensley of Farmersville was superintendent.

What the plaque says

Lavon School The first school in the community of Lavon was a two-story brick building. In 1910, the Little Creek School, which was organized in 1885, closed and transferred to the Lavon School District no. 135. Between 1938 and 1940, the school building for the Lavon Independent School District was built through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, the WPA was to be an extension of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration Work Program which funded projects at the state and local level. The goal of the program was to employ most of the unemployed people on relief until the economy recovered. While the school was being erected, students attended classes in the Charlie Callahan Store, located north of the school. The construction crew rotated so that everyone in the community that needed work would have the opportunity with wages around $3.50 per day. United States Congressman Sam Rayburn dedicated the building in the fall of 1941. The five-classroom school was designed by architect Hoke Smith and included a large gymnasium with hardwood floors and a kitchen and lunchroom on the south side of the main building. In 1949, the Lavon School District consolidated with the Copeville, Josephine and Nevada districts to form the Community Independent School District. The Lavon School Campus served as the district's elementary school for a time. Later it was used as a factory and a community library before use as the Lavon city hall. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 6.7 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 14 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 21 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 23 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.

More markers nearby

• Lavon — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Lavon — steps away
• Abston Cemetery — 1.6 mi
• Millwood and Millwood Cemetery — 2.3 mi