The Butler-Baker Alumni Project, Inc. (BBAP) held its annual fundraiser on March 25, in the renovated auditorium of the decommissioned Butler-Baker school that now serves as an event center.
“We call it our Luncheon of Remembrance, kind of like a school reunion for all the old students, but we have several members of faculty and staff who regularly attend, too,” BBAP Secretary Sandra Parham said.
Parham called the luncheon “the brainchild” of former Butler-Baker student Juanita Daniel-Dixon, but credited Daniel-Dixon’s Class of ’65 classmate Virginia Reid-Edwards with the suggestion of tying it to fundraising through a Roll Call of Classes at each event.
“She thought it might be a good way to get people to donate who might otherwise not donate,” Parham said. “She thought getting them here and seeing the old school and starting to reminisce with the classmates getting together, and hearing everyone’s names might make them donate a little more, and she was right.”
Parham agreed many luncheon attendees still live in Putnam County but pointed out this year’s event had visitors from South Florida and others from the Carolinas, as well as many from Atlanta and its surrounding communities.
This year’s Remembrance Luncheon was only the second consecutive of seven BBAP fundraisers held for the school’s ongoing renovation, with the five previous events hosted at Rock Eagle.
“We had actually renovated the auditorium and just had the air conditioning finally installed and had it ready to go in March 2020 when Covid struck and pushed everything back,” Parham said.
Located about a mile southeast of downtown Eatonton, Butler-Baker opened in 1956 as what was then labeled an “equal but separate” school for Black students from first through 12th grades.
It operated that way until 1970, Parham said when she entered 11th grade as part of the first high school junior and senior classes transferred over to an integrated Putnam County High School (now the PC Middle School facility).
“We went through what was called Freedom of Choice, where some parents did sign up their kids to go to the all-white schools,” Parham said. “And then finally came federally mandated total integration and the school (Butler-Baker) existed as an elementary and middle school for Blacks and whites until the ‘90s when Putnam County Primary was built.”
After that, Parham said Putnam County’s Head Start and the Georgia Family Connection program remained at Butler-Baker for several more years, along with some adult education and GED classes before the school was permanently shuttered in the early 2000s.
Parham said the school sat dormant and was subjected to neglect, theft and vandalism until about 2010, when then-school superintendent Marsha Clanton spearheaded an initiative for Eatonton’s Black community to purchase the facility.
“She and the Board of Education made it very, I guess, worthwhile, as far as money is concerned, for someone, for us, to buy it,” Parham recalled.
Local businessman Charles Hurt, a Butler-Baker Class of ‘70 alum, then stepped forward and purchased the buildings and approximately 25 surrounding acres of land and parking lots, she said.
“And that’s when a group was formed among the alumni that became the Butler-Baker Alumni Project, Incorporated, and that group decided to renovate the school and pay back the money our benefactor had invested,” Parham explained.
In addition to renovating the auditorium, which now hosts wedding receptions, grad parties and funeral repasts, Parham said.
Butler-Baker’s “new” gym, added during its Head Start and elementary school days, is back to hosting kids’ summer camps and 3-on-3 basketball tourneys.
The grounds also have been booked by several area churches for various “fests” and carnivals, and she said alumni of several graduating classes have “adopted” classrooms and funded their restorations.
Parham said her favorite part of these luncheon reunions is just being inside Butler-Baker again, where walking the halls brings back so many vivid memories.
“I always think about Butler-Baker and the fact that the house I lived in at that time was maybe a mile off the road. My granddaddy had a dairy farm and grew cotton and corn and so forth, but we were way back in the woods. We had an outhouse and went to Butler-Baker, and it had steam heat coming out of the radiators and inside toilets and running water and sinks. It was just something for us then,” she reminisced. “I look at those hallways now and they are so long, and I just wonder, what did I think when I was a little six-year-old girl just starting school? I could never imagine.”
Anyone interested in supporting BBAP’s mission can email Parham at sandra_parham54@yahoo.com or BBAP President Melton Smith at meltonsmith@juno.com.