LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — After five years of raising money, following other failed attempts, community members gathered Monday to ceremonially shovel some dirt.
They were marking the occasion, many thought impossible: the beginning of the restoration of Okahumpka’s Rosenwald School.
The school was built in 1930 amid a national effort to educate the nation’s Black children, using money from Sears CEO Julius Rosenwald.
It was a two-room schoolhouse until 1961, when it was converted into a community center.
The center closed in 2003, and the wood-frame building sat abandoned ever since, braving Florida’s hurricanes without doors and windows.
“I didn’t know what I was getting into when I offered to help raise some money,” Chris D’Amico said, not joking.
For the past five years, D’Amico has led the charge to save the school from demolition. He boarded up the building to protect it from the weather, wrote grants and got it added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
With the $452,000 raised from community members, D’Amico will manage the restoration of the building to its 1930 condition. One room will be reconstructed to reflect the era when children were seated at desks arranged by grade level. The other room will transform into an educational center focused on the history of the school.
After the four-month restoration is finished, a community center will be constructed behind the historic schoolhouse.
“This community hasn’t been a community since [the center closed],” D’Amico said. “It’s just everybody by themselves.”
Funding for the project has come from all places, including the Florida and Lake County governments, the National Christian Foundation, the Jewish American Society, the National Trust for Historic Places and private donations.
The James Hardie Building Materials Company will also supply all exterior siding, trim and other materials.
Several school graduates were among the crowd, and they still have fond memories of recess, teachers and friendships.
“It’s just a glorious feeling today to be here for this groundbreaking,” Harriet Hawkins Livingston, a descendent of the family that donated the land for the school, said. “I just can’t explain the joy of being here today, witnessing this -- seeing the truck, seeing the guys going and coming, working -- marvelous.”
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