click to enlarge

Valentines at Willson School
Tribune photo from February 12, 1955

Here are some of the Willson school's younger group during their crazy hat contest Valentine party Friday.  First place winners in the younger group were: Harold Kenworthy, most unusual hat; DeAlta Foderburg, prettiest; and Mike Cooper, funniest.  Second place winners were Carol Ann Nelson, most unusual hat; Bobby Crook, prettiest, and Paul Janssen, funniest.

Students in Mrs. Shrader's class at Ruth B. Willson School have decorated boxes ready for their valentine exchange.  Heartland Senior Services now occupies this building at 205 South Walnut.  Looking out the window one sees the Ames High School fieldhouse and bleachers.

Mrs. Dorothy Shrader, Willson school teacher, poses in a "ducky" hat (hat with duck on it) Friday afternoon at the school's Valentine party, which included a crazy hat contest.  With her in the front row is Robert Johnson, who won the prize for the most unusual hat.  In the row behind are (left to right) Oscar Thrasher, Morris Bogue, Harold Frame, Lester Warren and Jake Stumble, who won first prize for having the funniest hats, and Mary Lou Trumble, whose hat was judged prettiest.

From the Ames Community School's centennial booklet of 1970:
Ruth B. Willson School was constructed during the 1951-1952 school year and was opened to Ames pupils for the fall term beginning in September of 1952.  The building was designed to serve disadvantaged and deprived children on an individualized basis in a program of studies related to the identified academic limitations of the pupils enrolled.  The school was named in honor of Mrs. Ruth B. Willson, a long-time teacher of the handicapped pupils in the Ames School District.  Prior to the construction of Willson school, the Ames Community Schools operated Franklin Opportunity School on the same site.  Franklin School started operations in 1932 and continued serving children for the next twenty years.  This school was housed in a two-story frame house redesigned to accommodate about fifteen pupils.  The school, located just to the north of the Willson building, was razed during the summer prior to the opening of the Ruth B. Willson School.  Willson School has been in continuous operation since 1952.  It has provided an educational environment for academically handicapped pupils in an ungraded structure utilizing the continuous progress concept.

Each year there were about twelve teachers serving about one hundred and thirty pupils.  Twenty to twenty-six new pupils are enrolled in Willson each year, making an aggregate of about four hundred pupils during the period from 1952 to 1970.

This portion of a 1957 City of Ames map shows the location of the Ruth B. Willson School.  Notice the proximity of the Ames High School Fieldhouse, located where the Lincoln Center parking lot adjacent to Village Inn is today.

This 1953 USDA aerial photo of the same portion of Ames shows the Fieldhouse and the high school football field and bleachers directly behind Ruth B. Willson School as is seen in the Tribune photo at the top of this page.