Lessons Learned: The Story of Pilot Mountain School

Pilot Mountain School, located in southern Burke County, North Carolina, was built in 1942 as a WPA project. It served the community as a first- through eighth-grade school until 1970 when it became a junior high school. The school was closed in 1973 during a restructuring and consolidation of the school system. The building was sold at public auction and had a series of owners, falling into a state of disrepair before being bought and refurbished by Tom Brittain. The former school now houses a café, banquet and event facilities, and numerous shops once again serving the community for which it was built.

As author Gretchen Griffith says in her preface to Lessons Learned:

Tom Brittain bought a schoolhouse. He was tossing the clutter and peeling the splinters and thinking of future possibilities when the phenomena started.
The locals dropped by. They'd point to a corner and say, That's where..., or toward the principal s office and say, That's when.... Tom Brittain would strip away another layer, and the locals would say, That's how.... When the schoolhouse was exposed to the bare bones, the locals finally said, That's why.... So Tom Brittain called for a story catcher me.

Through countless interviews conducted in person, by phone, through the mail and email, Gretchen has captured the combined spirit of independence and community shared by the residents of Pilot Mountain. The memories recorded in Lessons Learned vary widely in their tone from happy to sad, from embarrassed to proud. They are the recollections of community members, school staff and faculty, and, perhaps most importantly, the children who grew up attending Pilot Mountain School. The thread that runs through all of these remembrances is a sense that the school did more than teach the facts found in books; it nourished the soul and provided a firm foundation for all who passed through its doors.

Gretchen has woven these interviews throughout a well-researched history illustrated with over 120 photographs and drawings. Her history of Pilot Mountain School recalls the hardships and sorrows of the 1940s, the recovery and advances of the 1950s, and the social upheavals of the sixties and seventies. Pilot Mountain School escaped the fate of so many of its contemporaries that were demolished to make way for progress or left to collapse through neglect. It continues to nurture the community as it did when it educated their children.