Sweet Home School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Runnels County, a little school once stood with a name sweeter than its surroundings might suggest. The year was 1902, and the people living in this rural stretch of Texas had a need.

A simple, pressing need: education for their children. So they did what rural Texans do. They got to work.

A two-room school started up on Emil Helms' farm, a mile and a half northwest of where you're standing now. Two rooms. That was enough to begin.

And the name? That fell to Henry Kriegel, one of the first trustees. He chose to call it Sweet Home.

Just Sweet Home. Whatever was in his heart when he picked those words, they stuck. Twenty years those two rooms served the community, and then in 1922, the school moved.

Right here to this site. A better equipped, two-room structure. Progress, slow and steady.

Now, the man at the center of that move, and of much of what followed, was a farmer and banker named John Simecek, born in 1878. He donated the two-acre tract of land this school would sit on, and he served as school trustee from 1922 all the way to 1944. The longest term of any trustee Sweet Home ever had.

The school kept growin in those years, or at least keepin up with its people's needs. A teacherage, that's a residence for the teacher, was added in 1928. A cellar came along in 1930.

And then, in 1944, Sweet Home School closed. John Simecek, who had given the land and given the years, lived on until 1964. But the school he'd served so long was already gone.

Today, only that cellar remains. Dug into the earth back in 1930, it outlasted the classrooms, the teacherage, everything. Sometimes the most modest part of a thing is the last part left standing.

What the marker says

The need for education in this rural area was met in 1902, when a two-room school was started on Emil Helms' farm (1.5 miles northwest). The name "Sweet Home" was chosen by Henry Kriegel, one of the first trustees. In 1922 the school was moved to a better equipped, two-room structure on this site. John Simecek (1878-1964), a farmer and banker who served the longest term as school trustee, 1922-44, donated the 2-acre tract of land. A teacherage (residence) was added in 1928, and a cellar in 1930. Sweet Home School closed in 1944, and today only the cellar remains to mark the location.