They gathered below the steely marker and celebrated its colorand sheen, then went kicking through the brown grass and dirt tofind the remnants of the place it represents.

Years of nothingness finally transformed into recognized localhistory Thursday morning when the Mississippi Department ofTransportation raised a historical marker commemorating the formerFair Oak Springs School, a consolidated school that served threeonce-prominent communities in eastern Lincoln County. The tall,silver and green marker now stands on a hill overlooking Highway 84at its intersection with Harmony Drive, near where the flagpoleonce stood in the school’s front yard.

“It got to the point where you couldn’t tell there was everanything there. But now we’ll know forever there was a school and acommunity there,” said Larry Butler, 67, a member of the Class of1960, Fair Oak Spring’s last graduating class before itsclosing.

Fair Oak Springs – a combination of schools at Fair River, OakGrove and Big Springs – opened in 1927 with eight classrooms andsoon added the first brick gymnasium in the county. More than 500students attended the school at its peak, but the nearby BrookhavenSchool District began siphoning off Fair Oak Springs students bythe late 1950s, dropping the student body to around 200 at its lowpoint. County supervisors closed the school in March 1960.

The campus was demolished shortly thereafter, and weeds and timereclaimed the spot. The community around the school began to vanishas well, and the conversion of Highway 84 into a four-lane finishedthe job.

For decades, all that remained of Fair Oak Springs were thebroken sidewalks that once led to the front door, now hidden in thebrush. That changed Thursday when former students’ effort torecognize the site – which began with an impromptu fundraiser at a2009 reunion – came to fruition.

“Everything went so well Thursday I was walking on air,” Butlersaid.

Ann Calcote, a 68-year-old member of the Class of 1959, waspleased with the historical marker, expressing sadness the site satso long without any recognition.

“After the new highway came through it changed the looks ofeverything. I guess that’s progress. That’s life,” she said.

Calcote said the marker is a reminder of a simpler time, whenschool, church and community were one.

“It was a good experience that our children won’t ever have, Idon’t think, of being able to go to school right where they live,”she said.

Bobby Thornhill, 71, graduated from Fair Oak Springs in 1959. Hedonated a lot of money to the effort to place a historical markerand was pleased to see the place of his youth commemorated.

“I think about it a lot, how it used to be,” he said.