Bruce Clark looked up toward the rafters in the old gymnasium with a slight smile and a twinkle in his eye.

This gym has sat near the corner of county roads 22 and 3 for all of Bruce’s life. A building went up there in the 1920s, but without a gym. “The joke in town was we were the gymless Jimmies,” says Byron Sanders, current superintendent of Baugo Community Schools.

Following a fire, the building was saved and the community constructed a gym in 1929 for basketball games, but also choir concerts, pageants, and even the formation of the Baugo Lions Club, the primary service club in the community.

Growing up, Bruce would often sneak into the building with friends to play basketball without the crowd. “There was always a window open somewhere,” he said.

When the Jimtown Jimmies played basketball in the building, Bruce was one of the youngsters on the stage of the building watching his uncles play basketball. Sandy Plotner watched her uncles on the same teams. A few years later, she moved to the district across the street from the school building — where her mother had attended. Jimtown High School opened in the mid-1960s and neither attended school in the building as some of their parents, aunts, and uncles had, but they were fond of that building. Bruce says, “Every time I watch the movie ‘Hoosiers,’ when you say a crackerbox gym, I know that’s what ours was.”

The former gymnasium will be restored in the community center. (Photos by Bryan Chris)

Sandy remembers going to a sock hop in the gym and climbing on the roof with friends. It seems as if many folks who went to school in the small, rural district that has 18 square miles have similar memories.

For a time, the building was where the high school wrestling team practiced. Then starting in the late 1990s, it sat mostly unused — except for storage.

The memories people had of the building and their hopes for what it could be again never waned. In 2017, Bruce and Sandy took their wedding pictures in the old gym. They’d reunited at a class reunion in 2014. The crush she’d had on him years ago was fanned into a flame and they started dating. “It’s really nice being with someone you’ve known 60 years,” she says.

Byron Sanders kept hearing people express hope that it would become usable. “You just couldn’t dismiss this building,” he says. A decade ago, a blue-ribbon committee explored how the building, which is on national and state historic registries, could be returned to glory.

When Byron became superintendent in 2019, school board members moved forward with him to find a way to restore the old building. A feasibility study followed, and then conversations with how to follow through on turning the building into a community center. Community Foundation staff joined conversations about potential funding and made connections to Kevin Deary, then-president/CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Elkhart County, about putting programming into a possible community center.

The community is coming together to restore the historic building. From left are donors Bruce and Sandy Clark, Baugo Superintendent Byron Sanders, Director of Finance and Transportation Zachary Quiett and architect Chip Coleman Jr.

“That resonated in the community as well,” says Byron. “Ultimately we wanted the community center to be a place to belong.”

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Craig and Teneen Dobbs, who both graduated from Jimtown in 1982, have fond memories of their time as Jimmies. Her father, Jack Davis, was the high school baseball coach who brought Ernie Banks to Jimtown and hosted him at their home. When the Cubs star spoke to the community, he pulled Teneen out of the crowd to demonstrate a proper swing.

Teneen was a cheerleader and the homecoming queen. They ran against each other for the class presidency. After college, they started dating and got married. They live in Carmel, but “our heart’s here,” she says.

They also have a heart for children. The Children’s TherAplay Foundation, which Craig and Teneen started, helps provide play-based therapy for children with spina bifida in central Indiana, where they live.

Craig and Teneen wanted to assure that Jimtown kids stay engaged in activities — and belong as they did.

The historic building in the heart of Jimtown southeast of Elkhart is being restored for modern use.

The school board committed money via a bond issue. Byron Sanders developed a pitch touting the 1929 building with its salt-glazed brick, hanging balcony, and fixed bleachers, but also adding modern amenities such as a warming kitchen for events and accessibility via ramps and lifts.

The Community Foundation’s Career Pathways Committee approved a $350,000 grant for the project, which is expected to cost $3.5 million. Byron approached the Clarks, who quickly gave a lead gift. Bruce says that he always thought that if they did something with the building, he’d want to support the effort. “I really didn’t want to see it torn down,” he says. The two former locker rooms in the building will be conference spaces that honor the four families — Cook, Clark, Plotner and England — in which Bruce and Sandy are rooted.

Their gift opened the floodgates and many people gave generously. Craig and Teneen matched the lead gift and the new building will be called the Craig and Teneen Dobbs Jimtown Community Center. They are also creating an endowment fund at the Community Foundation to support the building.

Chip Coleman Jr., senior project architect for Arkos Design, has the challenge of honoring the history while updating the building. Preparation for the project cleared out the space and putting on a new roof showed how well the building was constructed. He said it will have the appearance of an older building, but be able to host a range of events in the 21st century.

“We’re grabbing every space we can and making it usable space,” he says.

The building, like the Jimtown community, is sturdy and full of memories. By the end of 2024, it could again be a place where children make new memories and where they are nurtured to belong.

This story appeared in the 2023 Annual Report.