The old Castleton High School rebuilt

I was passing through Castleton on the way to 11001. The elementary school is closed because of a major reconstruction project , new buildings being built. The newer section built to house the early grades has been torn down. Only the old high school section is being left up to remodel.
Even the old play ground and tennis courts are ripped up. A fence surrounds the construction site. To some visitors to this site this means out with the old less functional in with some new brand of form follows function. To the others perhaps a post-mortem might be in order.
I have a small piece of post 1950 brick from the newer section , I grabbed before it was carted off. Back when this brick was laid there was what was to be called THE BABY BOOM. We needed space...kids were cropping up in the United States and England at a fast pace. This post WWII population expansion was overcrowding schools and adding burden to a variety of infrastructures in our country. Castleton High School was too small , the smaller district schools were overcrowded. As a temporary fix church basements were being rented out to use as temporary classrooms. So land was purchased on Maple Hill Rd. A new high school was built and the last graduating class of Castleton High School was 1955. The new MHHS opened the next year. Later years a new middle schoolwould be built.
Once a young man named Henry Peters played football on the field in the late 1930's and early 1940's they called the Sand Pit because of the fill used to make the field. Hard to grow grass on.
High school students filed into the Gym on December 8th 1941 to hear President Roosevelt address Congress about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. A very somber day....but not as somber as the graduation ceremony of 1941 as the teenagers of that graduation would soon be off to war. A young Pat Riley of basketball playing and coaching fame would shoot baskets at the outdoor court while visiting relatives in Castleton. People would learn tennis on it's courts and one day play soccer on the old football field {sand pit}. Education occured....lives lived. Teachers with names like Ward and Ruth Steele and Henninger roamed the hallways. Latin was taught as a regular language along with French at C.H.S..
Then I look across Scott Avenue.....a small house...........site of Castleton's and Schodack's only triple murder. A mother and 2 daughters killed by their father. The father sent away to a criminally insane locked unit when he was found incapable of standing trial. I would later meet this man in a professional capacity for a moment , sent chills down my spine and I try and forget it. Some things are not so easily forgotten.
And let me say.....just to keep an honest record....this was no Disney Land of Education....some were cast off pushed to quit others just ignored. For some others , however , it was a place to grow , discover friends and go on from there.