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It's been a long time since fights were resolved in the gym with gloves and supervision as they were when Grandview Elementary School first opened in 1949. Now Grandview's time in Provo is coming to an end. After this school year the school will close and most of it will be knocked down, while the rest of it is converted to other uses for the school district.
Thursday more than 50 years and at least three generations of alumni were invited back to the school to reminisce and wander through the school at an open house that featured the school choir and lots of memories. Grandview has been home to at least 6,000 students. Many of them came with their families to search through yearbooks for old pictures and visit classrooms that held chairs they had grown too tall for.
"I just found my picture back there in 1955," said Grandview alumna Rhoda Zobell. She thinks she may have been in third grade, but wasn't sure.
The walls of the school were covered in tributes created by Grandview's current students. One third-grader wrote about making gingerbread men and women in kindergarten and meeting firefighters in first grade. Many students wrote tributes to their teachers, field trips and pizza on Monday's.
One tribute to the school said, "Peace out Grandview. We will miss you."
Teacher Jill Williams said she will miss the familiar feeling that comes with the school where she's taught for 24 years.
"I'm going to miss just the feeling of home," Williams said.
Principal Drew Daniels, who will become the principal at Lakeview Elementary, which opens next year, said the school has a unique familiar feeling.
"The school just has a personality of its own," Daniels said.
Many people will miss the school that has been on Provo's Grandview Hill longer than the current road that runs past it.
"This is going to be a great loss," Zobell said.
Julia Brereton and her granddaughter Charity Christensen both attended Grandview as children. Brereton, who lives in the same house that she did as a student at Grandview, said she is sad to see the building go.
"I do love this school," Brereton said. "I do feel bad."
Crossing guard Bruce Clark has been shuttling children across the street to Grandview for 13 years. He's not looking forward to the day the school closes.
"The last day of school is going to kill me," he said.
Phil Lott, Provo School District's director of facilities and transportation, said Grandview was built in 1949. According to Daniels the building cost half a million dollars to build. New Lakeview Elementary cost about 20 times that.
There were additions to the school in 1967, 1984 and 1997. When Grandview is converted to technology offices, professional development space and classrooms for a gifted and talented program, crews will keep all the additions and the old 1949 gym.
Late last year the Provo School Board voted to close the school because a new school was being built west of the freeway -- Lakeview Elementary -- and Provo didn't need the extra space. Students currently attending Grandview will go to Westridge Elementary next year and the remaining portions of the school will be converted to offices, professional development space and classrooms for gifted and talented students.
• Brittani Lusk can be reached at 344-2549 or at
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