Colfax students explore the river of their history

By MARY STONE

COLFAX - The famed Cannes Film Festival wrapped up yesterday in France, but the movie to see if you're in Colfax, Wash., doesn't debut until Thursday.

Sixth-graders at Jennings Elementary School in Colfax recorded interviews of city leaders and longtime residents to create an hourlong documentary about their home.

All 52 Jennings sixth-graders - and one fourth-grader, who interviewed his grandfather - participated in the project, exploring their town's history over the course of 10 interviews.

Sixth-grader Derek Repp said flooding turned out to be a major theme in the history of Colfax.

"I just knew that the floods happened, but they got into deeper detail like where the floods happened and what got destroyed," Repp said.

The students learned the "concrete river," a portion of which carries the Palouse River past their school, was the solution for the persistent and catastrophic flooding that nearly caused the town to be relocated.

"They said they could put that in or they could just move the whole entire town," said Grayson McNeilly, also a sixth-grader.

The decision, in the early 1960s, to construct the concrete-lined canal and retaining walls came just in time.

"Two years after, there was a law passed that you couldn't do that," Repp said. "So if they hadn't done it then, they couldn't have done it."

Teacher Tim Young, who provided the video equipment for the project, sought out photos from the Washington Rural Heritage Project for the students to include in the documentary. Some of the images showed the construction of the canals.

"And it was awesome," Repp said. "They had loaders and dump trucks down there in the river."

Young and his fellow sixth-grade teacher, Mollie Kramer, are new to Colfax, so they learned along with the children. He is in his second year at the school after teaching in Umatilla, Ore., for 13 years, and Kramer, who grew up in Colton, is finishing her first year of teaching.

"People were talking about interesting things that we didn't know about, because we're not from here," Young said.

Their students' research debunked myths as well.

The former St. Ignatius Hospital earned a reputation as a haunted house, and the community has had some fun with the spooky rumor over the past couple years when the building was opened for tours around Halloween.

"Once we started interviewing people, it became a whole different story," Young said.

Many of the people the students interviewed were born at the hospital, worked there or were patients there, had their children there.

"It was a happy place," Kramer said. "Everyone talked about how everyone who worked there was so nice."

"We ended up realizing what a big staple this hospital was to the community and how much it means to the community," Young said.

With that new knowledge, students and teachers decided to emphasize the community aspect, rather than the haunted aspect, of the hospital.

Students compiled and asked the interview questions, and in some cases suggested family members or acquaintances to be interviewed.

Sixth-grader Corbin Burt suggested they interview Colfax's Unified Executive Director Val Gregory, whom he knew was knowledgeable about the hospital and the historic Perkins House, which houses the chamber of commerce.

"A while back my brother's senior project was cleaning up the old hospital to get it ready for the TV show 'Paranormal Lockdown' to come in and do a TV show," Burt said.

Conducting the interviews and researching their town's history introduced the students to community elders, public servants - and sometimes family members.

McNeilly found a photo of his great-great-great-grandfather while working on the project.

"He had a really big beard," he said.

His grandmother still lives along McNeilly Road, he said, so named because his great-great-grandpa, a county commissioner, was responsible for getting the road paved, McNeilly said.

"The goal as a school was to involve the community," Principal Travis Howell said.

The list of participants who granted access and provided background so the young researchers could tell their story includes probably 50 individuals and entities, Howell said, including city hall, the police department and chamber of commerce.

"It was just really cool how the community came together," he said.

Young smiled as the students described their roles in the project.

"They learned from the person they interviewed, but they haven't seen the whole thing yet," he said. "It's going to be interesting to have them see how it comes together for a greater story."

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Stone may be contacted at mstone@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2244. Follow her on Twitter @MarysSchoolNews.