GRANITE QUARRY — The old stone walls of Granite Quarry Elementary School hold lots of memories for Francis Trexler, even though the walls of her own school are long gone.

A two-story building once sat on the site of the current school, serving students from first through 11th grade. It was there that Trexler got her schooling.

“It was kind of my whole life, living back there,” she said.

This year, the school will celebrate its 100th birthday; Trexler will mark her 90th.

When she first walked through the school doors in 1933, the building was barely 10 years old and still bright as new paint.

“I loved going to school. I looked forward to it,” she said.

A single building housed all the local students, with elementary classes on the first floor and high school students on the second.

Despite the years, Trexler’s memory is clear as a bell.

She remembers the dim lighting of the old cafeteria; the way her lungs would ache during basketball practice; the cannery at the back of the school; the principal whose voice was rough and hoarse from getting gassed during World War I; the nickel and dime lunches; the little libraries in each classroom; and the year she misspelled “granite” on the seventh-grade graduation certificates.

“I can remember every teacher I ever had, from first grade on,” Trexler said.

If she thinks back, she can still hear the bustle and noise of the hallways.

“They changed classrooms upstairs and they sounded like a stampede of horses,” she said, laughing.

At age 6, Trexler was already an avid learner. While still at home, she devoured her older brother’s take-home lessons and any book she could get her hands on. By the time she started at Granite Quarry School, Trexler was ahead of her classmates.

“I was bored,” she said of those first years, “but I would never cause any trouble just because I learned everything (my brother) learned.”

Back then, it was the height of the Great Depression, and things were different. Trexler went to school in handmade clothes, and she remembers being envious of her classmates who could afford store-bought outfits. What she didn’t realize at the time was that her mother was a master seamstress and other students were envious of the outfits she made.

“We were all poor, and I have no idea why I thought I was poorer than anybody else,” Trexler said.

Trexler loved to write and practice penmanship, but paper and pens didn’t often fit in the family’s budget.

“Every penny was almost like $10 now,” she said.

So she hoarded scraps of paper and cherished her lessons in school all the more.

When she was in fourth grade, a new rock building to house some of the lower grades was built. It’s the only part of the old school still remaining and is the core of the modern Granite Quarry Elementary.

Trexler was in the building for one year as part of a mixed class of third- and fourth-graders. She recalls that when her class  finished its work, students would go help the younger children.

“We thought we were little teachers,” she said.

When rumors of war began to rage, Trexler remembers the building full of radio chatter as teachers tuned in to the news station. Trexler’s teacher wrote “little notes” to her husband, a high school teacher at Granite, and would send Trexler to the second floor. It was against school policy, so Trexler would wade through the tide of a class change to deliver the messages, trying not to get caught by administrators.

Eventually, she said, the husband was sent to fight in World War II.

By the time Trexler reached high school, rationing had begun. Girls couldn’t wear evening gowns to prom because silk was required for parachutes. Instead, they wore the best of what they had.

For Trexler, that was a yellow skirt she’d sewn herself, and, later, a sweater she bought with money from her father.

Trexler graduated as valedictorian of her class and with a slew of superlatives from her peers.

“They voted me everything in the class except for most talkative,” she joked.

But graduation day was a sad one for her.

“I hated to graduate, because that was all we had to do was go to school,” she said.

Trexler had earned two scholarships — one to Lenoir-Rhyne and one to Catawba College. But they didn’t cover the full tuition, and she was reluctant to take out a loan.

“My dad looked at me and said, ‘You’ll spend the rest of your life paying it back,’” she remembers.

Instead, she got married and went to work for her uncle. Later, she became an Avon lady and climbed the ranks to district manager. Eventually she did go back to school — to Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, where she studied marketing and retailing.

She stayed involved in Granite Quarry Elementary, often volunteering there in later years. She said she was “shocked” the first time she went in the building and realized how much times had changed.

Many of her children and grandchildren went on to be teachers. she looks forward to the bright futures of her great-grandchildren, who are currently in school.

When she heard about the centennial, Trexler said she was surprised.

“I didn’t realize it was quite that old,” she said.

Trexler and other graduates will gather at Granite Quarry Elementary for a celebratory breakfast and time capsule burial beginning at 8:30 a.m. Dec. 12.

Contact reporter Rebecca Rider at 704-797-4264.