Season 2 Episode 15: Eagle Lake High School - Gone But Not Forgotten with Special Guest Dave Henry

<p><strong>SEASON 2 EPISODE 15<br> EAGLE LAKE HIGH SCHOOL,<br> GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN</strong></p> <p><strong>The Significance of a High School to a Rural Community</strong></p> <p>Today, most of America’s population now resides in either the urban or suburban areas, and consequently, most Americans don’t struggle with the big question of whether their community can maintain its own high school. Nevertheless, this question continued to confront many rural dwellers in all states, one of these was the folks living in Eagle Lake, Texas. Before undertaking my writing career in full gear, I wrote three books. Book 1 and then Book 2 and 3 of Eagle Lake High School, A Pictorial History. While researching the writing of these books, I came to the 1968 Eagle Lake Headlight, where it showed the town’s people voting to consolidate all the schools in the county. However, this research demonstrated that Weimar and Columbus, Texas elected to keep their schools.</p> <p>During my research, I decided to examine the consequences of the cities in our counties that voted to close down their respective schools. This included those who voted to keep theirs. What follows is an action research project intended to examine the consequences of keeping or removing a school from a rural community, particularly Eagle Lake High School. The subjects in this study are Garwood and Sheridan towns that exist a mere ten miles from one another, and Columbus and Weimar that exist about the same distance from one another. The towns that kept their school today continue to sustain themselves, while the towns that lost their school have almost disappeared, or at least the downtown areas have. Garwood, Sheridan, and Eagle Lake are three small communities that have existed over a hundred and fifty years just a few miles apart along rural Highways 71 and Alt 90. They are relatively typical for rural communities in Texas. They all serve as hubs for area rice farmers for many years, and each had its own schools, banks, churches, department stores, doctors, au