The Little Town That Could: The Story Behind the Charlton Heston Academy

By Joseph Roush

A small town is suddenly deprived of its elementary school. Citizens rallied to find out how they could get their school back. This story documents their successful efforts, and it details how other communities in a similar condition might prevail by overcoming severe roadblocks. It is an uplifting tale of human courage. The author once attended school in the tiny village of Saint Helen. Years later he retired to his old hometown. He learned to love the inhabitants, and he has come to love the spirit of his neighbors. It was this spirituality that caused us to prevail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Aug 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781489702548

Joseph Roush

Joseph Roush taught school for forty-five years in Indiana and Michigan. After retirement, he used some of his talent to write four books. The Little Town That Could is his last effort. He was a father of three sons, an elementary school teacher, a junior high school coach, and later a school board member.

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About St Helen

IN SEPTEMBER OF 1936 AS A FOSTER KID I MOVED NORTH TO LIVE WITH MY great Aunt Amelia who was Grandmother’s sister. Amelia lived on Pleasant Road in the tiny village of Saint Helen. There were two hundred and forty souls residing in Saint Helen at that time. The main businesses were two taverns, a Gulf Oil distributorship, cabins to rent for visiting tourists, and a well-stocked lake featuring bluegills, perch, bass, pike, and bullheads. There was work for lumbermen in nearby forests.

Saint Helen was not a prosperous community. Most of us were poor but we did not really realize it as all our neighbors lived like us. Some of the local families had lost everything in the Great Depression.

There was, however, one prosperous family. This was the Carter clan. The Carter family was headed by John Carter, a Chicago businessman. John had migrated to this area with his extended family.

Old John Carter was a shrewd thinker. He determined to move several Chicago families to the forests surrounding Saint Helen where they could carve out small farms to raise livestock and chickens. This eventually proved to be a failing venture because poor soil and a multitude of hungry critters ruined things for the new settlers.

One of John’s sons was Russell Carter. Russell Carter bought property in the Artesia Beach area. This area surrounded Third Lake. It soon became a favorite fishing spot for vacationers from down state.

Russell had a son who later in life became known as Charlton Heston. Charlton Heston lived in Saint Helen until 1933 when his mother, Lila, left Russell and moved down state with her children to start a new life. That was the last time most of us saw Charlton and his mother.

Years later we discovered that Charlton Heston had become a gifted actor. When his movies came out in local theaters in West Branch and Houghton Lake we were proud to see our hometown hero in films such as THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, BEN HUR, EL CID,THE AGONY AND THE ECSTACY, THE BIG COUNTRY, and WILL PENNY. There were many more starring roles to come.

We became aware of the fact that Charlton Heston was much more than an actor. He had become an artist that Shakespeare could have been proud to know. We would often remind folks that we grew up in the same place where Charlton Heston once roamed the forests and streams around Saint Helen.

When Charlton Heston lived out his final days as a victim of Alzheimer’s disease we were sad and we surmised that this was the end of his story. However the name Charlton Heston lives on as the inspirational namesake of The Charlton Heston Academy here in Saint Helen.

In the following pages I will attempt to show the struggles and hardships endured by Saint Helen residents who determined that we would bring back a thriving school to this community.

A Cast Of Characters, Local Residents All

Jennifer Jarosz ……………………………………… The Queen Bee

Nancy Fain …………………………………… Daddy had a dream!

Scott Marshall ………………………… Reporter, Editor, Chronicler

Dave Fultz ………………… Salesman Extraordinary, Happy Warrior

Dave Patterson …………………… The Big Guy, Big Chief, Captain

Jason Sarsfield ………………………………………… FIRST Mate,

Richard Wood ………………………… Old Reliable Get ‘er done!

Mark Eitrem ……………………………………… General in charge

Robert Olschefski…Technician, inventor, innovator, our Mr. Wizard

Joseph Roush ……………………… Witness, Observer, Encourager

There were many other characters that made this story a possible venture, but these were chosen to represent the community. We have given our best effort and we pray it has been sufficient.

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Jennifer Jarosz, the Queen Bee

DO YOU REMEMBER THAT IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SCIENCE CLASSES WE HAD learned that when a bee keeper wished to move a hive he had to locate the queen? Move the queen and the hive would follow. Jennifer is our queen and the story of our efforts and successes begin with her. Allow me to introduce her to you. Her story is worth the telling.

Jennifer and her mother, Marge, moved to Saint Helen in 1977 when Jennifer was four years old. They moved into the grandfather’s house where they would reside until Marge could afford a place of her own. Marge immediately began to search for employment. She helped open up the K Mart store in West Branch. Her first job here in Saint Helen was as a dishwasher in a restaurant at the north end of town. Marge was a waitress in every eating place in this small town until she hired on at The Hen House restaurant located next door to the Cedar Inn Bar. Jennifer often accompanied her mother to these jobs and at the tender age of five she peeled potatoes, put out salt and pepper shakers, folded napkins, and greeted patrons. You could say that Jennifer grew up in the Hen House Restaurant. At the end of one year’s service at the Hen House Marge was asked to take over the management of the Hen House. Marge and Jennifer have been there since that date.

Jennifer attended elementary school here in Saint Helen from kindergarten to the fifth grade. After that she rode the bus to Roscommon where she attended grades six thru twelve. She graduated in 1991 and she was thrilled that her grandfather was there to see her graduate.

While she was in high school Jennifer participated in band, track, and choir. She ran for Miss Saint Helen twice and twice she came in second. Also while she was in high school she worked for COOR where she did office work as a secretary. She attended college at Kirtland for one year before she came home to the Hen House. She soon met her future husband. Together she and her husband have three girls, Kayla, Samantha, and Haley.

From personal experience this writer can testify that The Hen House restaurant has become a major asset to this community. Many times Marge and Jennifer have put on benefit suppers to help struggling families of Saint Helen. They often have helped raise funds for civic organizations such as The Snow packers, Chamber of Commerce, and others.

When Jennifer heard that a local millage was needed to secure funds for repairs to our local school she cajoled the residents she met daily to please vote to pass the millage. She was successful and the millage passed. Now those much needed repairs would be made. However soon after that millage passed the Roscommon Area Public School Board notified us that our school would be closed and our remaining elementary school students would be transported to attend school in Roscommon.

Angry that she had advocated for the millage vote Jennifer felt totally betrayed by the RAPS school board. Her children brought home a note from their schools indicating that our local elementary school would be closed down. This was the first official notification of any kind that our school would no longer exist. We would become a village without a school.

Even at this late date this writer could detect a tear in the corner of Jennifer’s eye as she continued to tell me about this local tragedy.

I wrote a letter to Dr. Millie Mildren, our superintendent at that time, Jennifer said. It took me a full hour to compose that letter, and I had to compose my feelings. I tried to take out all the bad stuff –the really bad stuff. The letter was meant to echo the sentiments of my friends and neighbors who like me felt betrayed.

I thought that it was necessary for the Roscommon School Board to come down here to Saint Helen to face us and explain fully about the decision to close our school. We wanted to know where this decision came from. Had they really explored all the alternative actions available?

Dr. Milburn agreed, Jennifer continued. She got her board together to meet with us. Prior to that meeting a group of us met in The Standing Bear restaurant. We established a committee so we could present ourselves as a civilized organization. We did not want the Roscommon School Board to be greeted by a bunch of wild animals.

We wanted to make our petitions very orderly so we decided to ask citizens of St. Helen to write out their questions on three by five cards which would be given to a spokesperson to present to the RAPS board. When it came time to appoint a spokesperson all fingers pointed at me, Jennifer sighed.

I had never done anything like that before, Jennifer continued. The last public speaking I participated in was in Speech class in college where my professor humiliated me in front of my classmates. The only reason I agreed to do this is the fact that everyone there at Standing Bear thought I should.

The meeting with the RAPS board was held in front of a standing room only crowd where Jennifer presented a sampling of questions posed by local citizens. We received no answers to any of the questions, Jennifer said. Members of the board had been coached not to respond.

The board did put on a presentation showing a decline in enrollment over the past several years and a projected further decline in the near future.

This caused our chief of police to ask, If you were aware of this decline, why in the world did you go to the taxpayers and give us false hopes that our school would remain here? That question went unanswered also.

"After the meetings we had at the school our little group decided that we needed to organize as a grass roots organization if we were to be serious about getting things done. We held another meeting and again I was selected to run the meeting. Veronica Bridson agreed to be the secretary for that meeting. We had interested folks who came from Lansing and Detroit. We had Dave Patterson. We had Mark Eitrem and Ralph Cunningham. These folks told us what to do to secure a Charter School for this community. The first thing was that we needed to become a nonprofit organization, and we needed to apply for a planning grant, a charter school planning grant.

After three or four more meetings we formed a nonprofit organization which we named Rural Education Matters (REM). This name actually came from Tula Alexander who knew how to write grants for the community. We needed a name which indicated a cause even bigger than ours. Rural areas all over the country were facing the same problems that we are facing now.

I’ll get back to Jennifer as the story progresses. Now I want to introduce other characters who are integral parts of this tale.

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Dave Patterson, the Big Guy

SUPPOSE YOUR FAMILY IS UPROOTED FROM THE BIG CITY OF DETROIT TO TAKE up residence in Roscommon County. Your father after several bad choices is no longer a part of the family. Your mother is now head of the household and the bread winner. This sounds like a recipe for disaster doesn’t it? It is possible that with a dose of motherly love, a competitive spirit, and teachers who would do more than teach but would supply mentoring that young Dave could get to know success on a personal level.

Dave shared his life journey with me recently. The following represents portions of that interview:

"I was born in the city of Detroit. My family consisted of a mother and father, and five boys.

I began my education in a small Holy Innocents Academy. The school location moved several