C. James Graff and his wife Mae G. Graff moved into the house nextdoor to the Little Red Schoolhouse in 1941. They would buy their house, 421 West Main Street, in 1945. They would live there until their deaths in 1984.
The Graff children, Leanna, Janie, Bill and June, played on the porch of the school and ice skated and sledded at "Coles' Hill."
At the end of WW2, James Graff climbed up on the roof of the Little Red Schoolhouse and rang the bell. He did this twice at the end of the war, one time when Japan surrendered.
Only the front yard of the Little Red Schoolhouse was grass and a little bit on each side. The rest of the sides and all of the back was not taken care of for many years and was overgrown with honeysuckle and sumac trees.
In the early 1950s, when Bill was about 14 years old, probably 1952 or 53, the Graff family and their neighbors, the Levandoski family, who lived at 14 North Coles Ave., cleared the land at the Little Red Schoolhouse.
The Graffs and Levandoski families all worked but James Graff and Charles Levandoski were the work horses who did most of the work clearing the school grounds of honeysuckle and sumac trees. It took some time to clear. They cut it all down and burned it all in a pile.
It was after this that the yard in the back began to be mowed. Bill Graff graduated high school in 1956.
There was a big old oak tree on the front yard of the Little Red Schoolhouse that the Township cut down. Mrs. Graff loved that old oak tree. Later there was planted a new tree on the front lawn. Perhaps the maple tree. James and Mae Graff died within months of each other in 1984. In 1987, their son Bill Graff paid for a brass plaque to go at the base of the new tree. The engraving on the plaque says "In Memory Of C. James & Mae G. Graff 1987." The plaque is now kept at the Little Red Schoolhouse.
Thank you, Bill Graff, for the information.