Just Like Nothing (else) on Earth: The OTHER Leesburg High School

By Tim Jon

You may not remember the name Chuck Thornton – despite the historic line of time for those in the family in this region – but I was fortunate enough to serve under his management during my early tenure as news director at Wage Radio in Leesburg – beginning more than a quarter century ago at the time of this writing. 

I’d been a transplant from Minnesota, and Chuck felt it important to demonstrate the many vast differences I’d find here, south of the Mason-Dixon. On our first drive around the locality, he eventually (remember this is Loudoun County) – stopped in the historic section of our Town at a two-story, wooden building with the windows boarded up and the entire structure painted white. 

“This was our Black High School,” Chuck told me. My reaction was something like, “Your WHAT?” My intellect and emotions were caught completely off guard. Again, having grown up in a small midwestern town in the 1960’s, I hadn’t been exposed to much racial interaction, much less actual segregation. 

I’m sure I forced myself to take several hard looks at this one-time public facility; our conversation that morning – this is 1997 – enlightened me that the school had been closed sometime in the late 1950’s; the nearby Douglass School then served for a time as Loudoun County’s African American educational facility. 

And I’m not sure if it was that same morning, but Chuck also informed me – while on the trail of sensitive topics – that there used to be a public swimming pool at the local firehouse; now no more than an oversized cement slab, it had been filled with concrete to stifle the uproar from the folks who didn’t want their family members recreating with anyone from another racial background. The firemen were evidently so sickened by the flames of racism that they filled their own swimming pool with cement. Apparently, that kept the ‘chosen’ ones from rubbing elbows with the ‘wrong’ people. 

But, back to where we started – at that school building: it was still standing last time I checked in at the site – just a stone’s throw from North King Street near Ida Lee Park; it sits in a peaceful spot adjacent to Union Cemetery, on a carpet of healthy green grass. 

Just the wooden structure is about all that’s visible from the exterior; the boarded-up windows leave me guessing about how things look inside. It may be much as the school system left it all those decades ago: desks for students and teachers, blackboards with chalk and erasers, textbooks for various basic studies, some rudimentary instruments for practical science or industrial arts, and a few janitorial supplies. 

Or maybe it’s crammed with stored educational detritus accumulated through the years, from tightly packed school buildings elsewhere in the County. It could be an empty shell; and, yes, I know could make a few inquiries and receive the usual replies in the form of dry listings of facts, but I’m more interested in the unseen, perhaps imaginary mysteries behind any covered window or locked door. Especially here. 

And – in the spirit of wonderment – what of the unnumbered moments within the sanctuary of these boards and windows? Standing outside during my latest visit, I couldn’t help but listen and even somehow feel through the various senses – for the lost voices and footfalls – perhaps still reverberating on classroom floors and hallways and stairwells. What stories could they tell? I envisioned a multiplication table of the number of students factored against individual memories, and imagined the countless human experiences of humor, pathos, friendship and isolation. 

And what of the future for this unique piece of the past and present? Will the nearly forgotten structure fall to demolition? Or simply fall from neglect? I would imagine that the former students have very mixed emotions about the place and the time spent within the walls. The lessons they learned here certainly exceeded the bounds of reading, writing and arithmetic. 

I can’t help but wonder if the former sanctuary could be preserved as an historic artifact – considering its original use as an educational facility; the space could even serve as a living museum in the timeline of local race relations. 

If you know your history you can avoid repeating it, they say. It could be a learning experience for us all.