Community gets wish as marker is unveiled for Ogden Elementary
By Mallory Colliflower
For The Herald

Photo By Ronald Dupont Jr. Verdell Robinson smiles as a crowd of more than 100 people applaud as she pulls the drape off the marker for Ogden Elementary School. She herself attended the school as a child.

BLAND -- Umbrellas blocked the brutal midday Florida sun, and program booklets fanned the sweat off of faces in the crowd.

Cars lined both sides of Country Road 241 in Alachua on Sunday afternoon, and a blue tent shaded local Bland community residents dressed in their best.

Some came directly from nearby church services, while others came from as far as Jacksonville to be present at the historic occasion.

More than 100 people were in attendance at the former site of Ogden Elementary School, at the intersection of Country Road 241 and Northwest 278 Avenue, to witness the unveiling of a new 2-sided historical marker documenting the story of the school’s founding and its community.

Ogden Elementary was one of Florida’s oldest schools of its kind; a 2-room wooden school house built in the early 1900s to meet the educational needs of local African American children in the Bland community.

During a time when racial segregation was the local norm and the public school system failed to cater to black children in the outlying rural areas, members of the Bland community built what they needed from the ground up.

With one teacher, a one-room building and one outhouse, Ogden Elementary School opened its doors.

Former school principal, 93-year-old Feirmon E. Welch, recalled his excitement in the 1940s when the school was “expanded” by having carpenters partition the building into individual classrooms.

“We were both appreciative and happy to have the building turned around into classrooms,” Welch said. “We could deal with the children at that time in peace and harmony.”

To Mayola Phelps and Leoris Richardson, both former students at Ogden, Welch was more than just the school principal.

Photo By Ronald Dupont Jr. Gussie Lee (left) and Verdell Robinson (center) sing with others during the marker dedication for Ogden Elementary School. Lee and Richardson were students at the school.

“He was everything,” Phelps said. “He was the principal but he was also the person who had to protect us as we would walk to school.”

That long morning walk often needed a chaperone, as the route to get to school meant a stroll past the local prison. Some days, buses of white children would drive by taunting and harassing the children of Bland as they made their way to Ogden.

Sunday’s event, however, had little to do with bad memories.

Some of the fondest for Phelps and Richardson came from the schoolhouse pond, which served many purposes.

“That pond was our science lab, our baptism pool and the fishing pond where we’d get our dinner,” Richardson said.

During Sunday’s unveiling ceremony, Alachua County Commissioner Rodney Long accepted a $500 check from Bland Community Families to offset the cost of the marker and the research that went into documenting the school’s history.

A large part of that research was done by Alachua County Historical Commission member Karen Kirkman, who also wrote the marker’s inscription.

“As president of the historic Hale Homestead, my area of expertise was Southwest Alachua County,” Kirkman said. “This was an opportunity to broaden my knowledge of Northeast Alachua County so I accepted the challenge gladly.”

Verdell Robinson, who managed the marker project and also attended Ogden, joined her sister Gussie Lee and other Bland Community singers for a few verses of “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!” as the audience joined in singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Robinson acted out the highlight of the program, the culmination of her long-awaited project.

Photo By Ronald Dupont Jr. Feirmon Welch, 93, a former principal of Ogden Elementary School, speaks at the marker dedication ceremony held Sunday in Bland.

With the help of Carl Rose, chairman of the Alachua County Historical Commission, Robinson proudly pulled away the black cloth that hid the marker to a wave of applause and camera flashes.

“You may say that this is a diminishing community,” Robinson said, “But I assure you we’ll be sticking around here for a while.”