The Lincoln County Normal School educated hundreds of teachers during its 60 years of operation. The building has been gone since the late 1960s, but the vacant block where it once stood along Center Avenue in Merrill still bears its name.
With the construction of a gazebo and other improvements, the park is in a state of rejuvenation. A group of retired educators and Normal School graduates felt it was time to pay tribute to the building which served as Lincoln County’s first Courthouse before becoming a teachers college. A grassroots movement was organized to commemorate the site of these two important institutions. A granite bench was installed Monday, bearing an engraving of the building as well as the years it served each of its functions. The bench was built by Tomahawk Monument Company and the building was hand engraved by Tomahawk artist Natalie Watland.
The black granite bench is built to last forever, said Tomahawk Monument Co. owner Tim Haskin.
“Normal” sounds like a funny name for a park, unless you know the history. The organizers of the bench campaign realized that fewer people remember the Normal School building,
“We want people to know why it’s called Normal Park,” said Emily Edmund, a 1951 Normal School graduate.
Marylin Jirovec, a 1966 graduate, added that children who visit the Brickyard School museum each year wonder about the park’s name.
“Now they have a symbol,” she said.
Sharon Johnson Pankow graduated from the Normal School in 1962 and went on to a career in education that included being a school district administrator.
“It was a good foundation,” she said. “There were probably a lot of people who went on from here to really good careers in education.”
Sharon remembers testifying at a hearing in Madison when the legislature was discussing the closure of the Normal School. She wanted legislators to know how important the school was.
“I probably would never have gone to college if it hadn’t been for the Lincoln County Normal School,” she said. “It meant the world to me.”
Like many other Normal School students who came from out of the area, Edmund worked for a Merrill family for her room and board. On the weekends, it cost her 66 cents to take a train home to Harshaw.
After Lincoln County built the current Courthouse in 1903, the former Courthouse stood empty until 1907, when it assumed a new role as a training school for teachers. Men and women came from all over the county – and surrounding counties – to learn the “norms” of teaching. At the end of the program, they were certified to teach elementary school students in the numerous one-room rural schools or the state graded schools.
The two-year program included student teaching in a one-room school.
“At the end of the two years you really knew if you wanted to be a teacher or not,” Edmund said.
Many elementary students also attended school there as practice pupils for the aspiring educators. They experienced student teachers from the college along with instruction from their classroom teacher.
The last graduates of the Normal School received certificates in teaching in 1967. The building was razed shortly thereafter.
The fundraiser efforts for the commemorative bench kicked off in June 2013 at a reunion of Normal School graduates. Marie Rein, who served on the bench committee, said donations came in both large and small amounts.