BUFFALO TWP — Chuck McCafferty remembers when teachers used wooden paddles and buildings were heated by pot belly stoves.

McCafferty, 83, who still lives in the township, attended the Kelly School on Sarver Road in the 1930s.

He recalled the teacher, who taught grades three through six, was responsible for lighting the stove each morning.

The school's wooden floor also required attention.

“They oiled the floors to keep the dust down,” McCafferty said.

The school was built in 1854. A second room was added in 1904.

Although Glenn Montgomery didn't attend classes at the Kelly School, he remembers its prominence in Buffalo.

“The bell was heard all over the township,” he said.

McCafferty also recalls having fun outside the school. He used to throw water down the adjacent hill to create an icy slide in the winter.

McCafferty and the other students used homemade toboggans made of tin to glide down the slope.

Decades later his daughters attended kindergarten there.

Many years before, McCafferty's great-aunt Ida Smith Dorrsett was a teacher in the school.

Lee Risch's mother, Florence Macurdy, also was a teacher at the school in 1918.

“She was 18 years old at the time,” Risch said.

She later became postmaster for Sarver from 1943 to 1959.

Her great-nephew, Gary Risch Sr., a township supervisor, is another Kelly School alumnus.

“That's where I got my first lickin',” he said.

While in first grade, Risch had missed the bus home. The teacher was less than pleased. “I got a smack on my butt because I missed my bus,” Risch said.

Lee Risch said most of his family members attended the school at one point or another.

“I think I'm the only one who didn't go to the school,” he said.

When Risch was in the right age bracket in the early 1940s, the Kelly building was not being used.

After serving as an elementary school for decades, the Kelly building eventually became a kindergarten classrooms.

Although classes are no longer held in the building, the Freeport School District is renovating the interior.

In 2005, a veterans memorial was built near the school house.

More than 300 names of men and women from Buffalo, Clinton and Winfield townships and Freeport, who served during World War II, are listed on the memorial.

The school building is now a historical landmark.

McCafferty is glad a piece of township history is being preserved.

“I'm glad they're keeping it up,” he said.