By Fred Jeter
special correspondent

If you close your eyes tight and take a stroll down memory lane in western Chesterfield, you’re apt to bump right into old Grange Hall High.

Long before the Clover Hill Cavaliers, and long, long before the Cosby Titans, Grange Hall’s Hilltoppers were the main event way out on Route 360.

Things weren’t too fancy. The skyline then consisted of little more than church steeples and silos.

“I remember when it [Rt. 360] was just a two-lane road – one lane going east, the other heading west,” recalled three-sport hero Kenny Marshall (Class of ’63).

Bernie Murrell (Class of ’72), a two-time, All-District basketball forward who averaged 21 points a game, remembers when tractors might have outnumbered sedans on the bumpy back roads.

“Heading toward Richmond, the first stoplight you saw was down at Southside Plaza,” he said.

Noise pollution in those days was the chirp of crickets on summer nights, and the haunting call of whip-poor-wills.

In a farming community, basketball/football star Greg Orr (Class of ’67) recollected how athletics served to bond the rural community.

“Wasn’t a lot else to do … when the Hilltoppers were playing a game, it was an event … you got there by hook or crook – hitch hike if you had to,” Orr said.

From 1922 through 1972, Grange Hall served as the education/sports center for youngsters living from about Genito Road to the Amelia County line.

That included Winterpock, Skinquarter, Moseley … and down so many connecting country dirt lanes.

Once a home for grades K-12, then a high school and now an elementary school, Grange Hall Elementary school has a long, proud history. - Photo by Sara Page

The high school and middle school closed in the fall of 1972, when Clover Hill opened 6.1 miles east. Cosby will take over as the next official Grange Hall spinoff when Clover Hill opens its new digs off Genito Road in the fall.

Maintaining a close-knit, family feel, Grange Hall has remained an elementary school with sparkling standardized test scores and abundant parental support.

“The PTA meetings are packed,” said Jack Horner, who was Hilltoppers’ ball boy/bat boy in the late ‘60s. “You see parents and grandparents who used to go there.”

Horner is a branch of a four-generation Grange Hall family tree.

“My grandparents, parents, myself, and now my children – all went there,” said Horner, now boy’s athletic director for the Clover Hill Bulldogs Youth Association, based at “The Grange.”

Grange Hall’s story debuted in 1922 when seven one-room schools in thinly-populated areas consolidated to become Grange Hall.

The name “Grange” comes from the organization of farmers who constructed the five-room building 150 yards off Route 360 (it’s closer now, due to road widening).

In the beginning, heat was supplied by stoves and light by kerosene lamp. The entrance and exit was by means of a path cut through pines.

School buses (called trucks) made ruts so deep the vehicles were often stuck; frequently, children had to get out and push.

The first year, there were about 150 students, K-12.

During the later years, there were about 20 students per senior class.

A series of expansions re-shaped Grange Hall over the decades, but one thing remained. To borrow a line from Barbara Mandrell, it was “country, when country wasn’t cool.”

The Beatles and Temptations might have been atop the billboard charts across America, but Grange Hall was George Jones country, although they did play the Harlem Globetrotters theme, “Sweet Georgia Brown,” while the basketball team warmed up.

Shopping was dicey, at best.

There weren’t many cash registers – there was Bottom’s Store (later a BP Station), the hub of the bus/truck routes; Crump Store in Winterpock; and Gardner Store near where the Hampton Park is today.

To swap yarns, talk about girls and shine their cars, young men gathered at Barr’s Garage.

Southside Plaza, 19 miles east, was the destination for those wanting a hamburger (Kelly’s) or perhaps a bit of romancing (Plaza Drive-In).

From any direction you assessed, Grange Hall was way, way out there, and a little-known faraway outpost as closely linked to Amelia or Farmville as to Richmond.

Marshall, who played summer baseball for Midlothian Post 186, recalled how little his more citified teammates knew of Grange Hall.

Laughing at the memory, Marshall shared this story:

“I remember a boy telling me he’d finally seen Grange Hall … he said he’d gone past it on a field trip.”