By Patrick McCallister
For Hometown News
A centennial only comes around once every 100 years and folks at Enterprise Elementary plan to celebrate the school's with style.
"We're going to have a 100th year fall festival on Oct. 27," said Virginia Abernathy, principal.
Art teacher Riley Nutt is heading up planning for the Enterprise Elementary Family Fall Festival. He said folks at the Enterprise Preservation Society and the school plan to close off Main Street from Lincoln Avenue to Third Street and have a block party with history tours from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
"We're using that as a walk thoroughfare and will have some music," Mr. Nutt said. "We're trying to make it a whole community event."
The fair will have a bounce house, dunking booth, football and basketball tosses, prizes and a "fortuneteller."
"A couple food trucks are coming and we've invited car buffs to bring their vehicles to park on the street and show them off," Mr. Nutt said.
Among other fun activities, he is going to drag out his Sirenetta quadricycle to ride with folks around town.
Mr. Nutt is living near and teaching at his old elementary school, fulfilling a dream of his. He grew up in Enterprise and moved away in 1992. He moved back in 2001 and set out to get his dream job at the school. He landed it in 2005.
Pete Peterman, too, still lives near the venerable school he attended.
"I can't tell you for sure," Mr. Peterman said. "I was born Nov. 21, 1927."
Meaning Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House when Mr. Peterman started school at Enterprise. He'd go to school there for 10 years.
"Back then, you went from first grade to 10th grade in Enterprise here," he said. "Then you rode a small bus to DeLand for 11th and 12th grade. I remember back then, we had pretty good size classes, 25 kids."
All of whom would go on the annual student trip on the Florida East Coast Railroad.
"You would go down there and get on that train and ride to Benson Junction," he said. "You'd get on the train, the whole class, and have your lunch down there when they switched around the cars. That was the highlight of the year."
Benson Junction was in what is now DeBary.
Ms. Abernathy grew up in Texas. She started working for Volusia County Schools back in '90, and became Enterprise's principal a few years ago.
"There are generations of families that went through Enterprise that still live here," she said.
And the school's still pretty rural. Sometimes teachers have to shoo wild turkeys off the playground, and children have learned about the whole circle-of-life thing unexpectedly.
"We have lots of natural vegetation on our campus and natural creatures," the principal said.
Including an owl who decided to grab a squirrel from the playground when a class was heading outside.
"The girls were so upset," Ms. Abernathy said. "The guidance councilor had to do a little guidance about the cycles of life."