Bon Meade Elementary School graduates celebrate 50th anniversary
Pat Miele McQuiston is 56, but the passage of more than four decades has not dimmed her memories of Bon Meade Elementary School in Moon.
"I had a lot of good friends, and I liked all my teachers because they seemed interested in helping you do your best," said McQuiston, who now lives in New Galilee, Beaver County.
To show just how much time had passed, McQuiston shared one painful memory of the school, the day of her 11th birthday, when she had a schoolgirl crush on fifth-grade teacher H.F. "Skip" Edger.
That day, Edger came up behind her and "told me to stand up, which I did. He then gave me a birthday swat with a paddle." While the swat was painful physically, "he injured my pride," McQuiston said. Right then and there, "my schoolgirl crush ended."
The days of wooden paddles are long past, but the Bon Meade Elementary School community remembered its past this fall with a 50th anniversary assembly.
Bon Meade reading specialist Dawne Sohn, who entered first grade in the school's first year, arranged the celebration and asked McQuiston and others to share their memories with the students. Sohn shared her own memories and photographs of herself, the school and her life to show students how what they are now learning can affect their adult lives.
"I don't think they quite grasp what 50 years means," Sohn said. But she recalled the comments teachers wrote on her report cards. "These people meant so much to us."
"It was really cool, seeing the teachers and students that were here 50 years ago," said fifth-grader Alexa Collins, 10, of Moon. "Maybe when 50 years have passed, I'll be back here."
"We were able to see the jobs she (Sohn) has now and see the teachers she had then," said her classmate Allison Frenz, 10, of Moon.
The students also sang a song to Edger, one that his former students made up decades before.
"It was very cute, especially since they had no idea who they were singing about," said Edger, now 73, of Moon, who said he gave each student a birthday swat until the district outlawed corporal punishment.
"And they knew it was coming," he said.
The name of the school, which is Scottish for "beautiful meadow," was taken from the Bon Meade section of Moon, a rolling plateau along Brodhead Road in the western end of the township. The school opened in the fall of 1959 with two classrooms for grades one through six. Moon Area School District would be one of the last districts in the state to implement kindergarten.
Today, Bon Meade has 580 students and four classrooms of each grade level, kindergarten through fifth, with one exception: third grade, which is divided into five classrooms.
"I've been here 5 1/2 years, and the family participation is phenomenal here," said Principal Joe Garrity. "A lot of parents went through Bon Meade and stuck around; the whole community is on the same learning page."
A caring, family-oriented community is a tradition at Bon Meade, said Debra Majcher, 56, of McCandless, the Moon Area High School librarian and daughter of the school's first principal, Anthony Rende. When Rende started on the job in 1959, he also had the additional responsibility of teaching a sixth-grade class.
Majcher said her father, who died in 1992 at age 67, "was really, really proud of that school."
"He felt he had the best staff. He talked about the teachers and how good they were and how effective they were in the classroom. Every morning, he would be greeting people at the door.
"It was a little community up there."
Rende eventually left the school to become the district's business manager, the position from which he retired.
Moon Superintendent Donna Milanovich began her career at Bon Meade as a second-grade teacher in 1975 under Rende.
"He took such pride in that school and he cared about that school," said Milanovich, 56, of Center. "My first teaching experience (involved) those high standards. Between Mr. Rende and my fellow teachers, I really wanted to do the best for children."
More residential development in the western portion of Moon meant the school steadily grew. The school first went a renovation-addition project in the 1970s, when the wings of the school were expanded, Milanovich said.
Bon Meade underwent another renovation project that tried the patience of its staff and students for 18 months in 1999 and 2000. The principal at the time, Ned DiBenedetto, 63, of Moon, said students and adults "did a yeoman's job" of coping during construction of six additional academic classrooms, more rooms for subjects like art and music, and another gymnasium.
DiBenedetto, who retired from the district in 2004 and now works for Robert Morris University, said he thinks "it's the best-looking and best-equipped school in the district." He praised both the staff as "an excellent mix between veteran teachers and the younger teachers" and also the students, who on field trips would elicit comments about "how attentive and how polite they were."
"I still believe it focuses on children and focuses on academics and on meeting the needs of the kids," Milanovich said.
The celebratory assembly underlined that philosophy by including a poem written last year by a former Bon Meade student, Abby Keppel, who concluded, "Bon Meade is a friend that is always with you."
