Updated 1 February 2000 URL is http://our.tentativetimes.net/youth/sowells.html
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About Southern Wells
(Awwww, I know this already! I went there for 13 years, so just jump me to the alumni news!)
Southern Wells Community Schools, kindergarten through senior high, is a complex of attached buildings in the cornfields of our county. Although the mailing address is Poneto, Indiana, the school stands alone, in a beautiful campus on a county road. This school district has no industries to tax. All the money comes from those who live there on small farms or in tiny towns. It is awesome. The actual corner where the school sits used to be the Chester Center school before consolidation.
When the elementary school caught fire, they (we) built it "one brick higher." The town of Warren in Huntington County gave us a big old traditional school that had been consolidated out of business. Our kids bussed over and went right on learning while the new school was being built. This earned a national award for both towns.
The Midland Community Spirit Award
This award commemorates the rescue of Jessica McClure from the well where she was trapped for 58 hours. There are hundreds of nominations each year. The Warren/Southern Wells award is a major and richly deserved honor.
The Midland (Texas) Community Spirit Award has been given five times in five years. You want to know who the winners were, don’t you? They are
Sioux City, Iowa, for their response to the DC-10 crash.
Yakima, Washington for ridding their neighborhoods of drugs.
Bangor, Maine for personally welcoming 63,000 Desert Storm veterans.
Warren/Southern Wells Schools for turning a civic center into an elementary school after the school had burned down, and
Petaluma, California for the massive search for 12 year-old Polly Klaas and for the ongoing efforts to establish a foundation in her memory to serve other young victims.
Nominations and information: the mailing address is Midland Community Spirit Award, PO Box 1890, Midland Texas 79701. Their email link has gone dead, so I can’t update this news.