A sign marks the area where the Freyburg Public School once stood. According to Florence Farek, who went to school there, it actually closed in 1952.
Although Florence’s priceless collection of war stories is now out of print, a few copies are available online or in area museums.
Florence’s older brothers, Melvin and Nolan, were among the first students to attend the new school.
Freyburg’s modern 1928 schoolhouse was a vast improvement over the first one built in 1876.
Standing directly behind the kneeling boys, Florence poses with her classmates and their teacher, Otto Banik, in 1941. Few students went beyond the ninth grade because they lacked transportation to attend Schulenburg High School.
Students were prohibited from speaking anything but English on the Freyburg School grounds. Monitors (informers) were appointed to turn in those who didn’t follow the rule. A couple, Albert O. & Vera Bartram, were the teachers in 1937-38.
The lessons that Florence Hertel Farek learned at a two-room country school in Freyburg, Texas, still make her smile. In the 1930s, the Schulenburg, Texas, resident, who will turn 95 in August, lived on a farm in the rural South Central Texas community. Most of the kids, who spoke only German or Bohemian at home, learned English in the first grade.
