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BROKEN BOW — As they celebrated the last Thanksgiving in their school, the seven students at Round Hill Elementary south of Broken Bow recounted details of America’s first Thanksgiving in 1621.

“I’m disappointed and a little sad,” fifth-grade student Carrie Jones said Thursday at the event.

She and her schoolmates will attend school in Broken Bow next year after the district’s school board decided this would be the former Class I school’s final year of operation.

Round Hill is about 16 miles south of Broken Bow.

Before the students gave a narrative of the first feast that Pilgrims and American Indians celebrated together, relatives, current and former neighbors, friends and former students arrived at the one-room schoolhouse with desserts, vegetables and salads.

Mothers of the Round Hill students spent the day preparing the turkey, potatoes and gravy, and stuffing.

Round Hill parent Tracy Popp, who also serves on the Broken Bow School Board, opened the evening with some emotional words about the school’s final year of operation.

Then she added, “But we’re going to celebrate the fact that we (still) have our school this year.”

The students sang “To Grandmother’s House We Go,” a 10-year tradition, and asked the community to join them in “God Bless America” before having a word of prayer before the meal.

Leland Nelson, 75, still lives in the community and went to school at Round Hill as a child. “It’s hard to separate the school from the community,” he said, because the school is the glue that held the neighborhood together.

“Loss of the school takes away one of the reasons for the community to get together,” he said.

Lonnie McCullough went to Round Hill as a child and sent his two children there, and now his wife, Cindy, works there. He said he doesn’t ever remember not celebrating Thanksgiving as a school community.

Round Hill teacher Sarah Jane Graham said she believes the tradition started roughly 35 years ago. “It’s a tradition everybody looks forward to. It’s a gathering of the community for visiting and sharing. It will be a loss. There are so few things the community still gathers for, and this was one of them,” she said.

R.P. Smith, another second-generation Round Hill student whose sixth child still attends the school, said, “When people are reminiscing about the good ol’ days, there’ll be an emptiness without the school here.”

Leilani Jensen agreed. “We’ve been a community family for a long time,” she said. Jensen graduated from eighth grade at Round Hill in 1966.

“It’s hard to think this is the last time we’ll be doing this — ever. It’s sad,” sixth-grader Hannah Smith said.

“It’ll be our last time playing hide and seek together,” Carrie Jones said of the traditional game the kids played in the dark after Thanksgiving dinner while adults visited inside.

“I’m gonna miss the food,” Charmayne Popp, a sixth-grader, said.

Sixth-grader Faith Nichols is a first-year Round Hill student who wishes she’d gone to school there a lot sooner. Nichols believes at Round Hill she has been able to get a better education, learn more life skills and learn how to treat people, “not just go to school.”

“We told you we had the best school in the world, and now you believe us,” Hannah Smith said to Nichols.

“The end of the school year is when it will really hit,” Stephanie Jones said. She has sent all four of her kids through Round Hill, and her husband Gregg attended there as a child.

Beth Smith agreed but added, “(Broken Bow) gave us what we wanted. We have had time to prepare.”

Unlike some districts that immediately closed the former Class I’s that came under their control, the school board in Broken Bow told Round Hill patrons they would have a year’s notice before the school was closed.

Tracy Popp said she believes Round Hill’s relationship with Broken Bow has been one of the best in the state between a former Class I and the larger district that took control of them with the passage of LB126.

“Things have gone smoothly, and we want that to continue,” she said.

The Broken Bow school district plans to work with Round Hill community members to decide what should be done with the school building after classes end there in May.

Community members haven’t decided what they’d like to do with the building. Popp said it could be difficult to find someone willing to commit to taking care of the property and helping to pay the utilities.

Round Hill school is the area’s only gathering place. “What’s really sad is, it’s done for future generations,” Popp said.

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betsy.friedrich@kearneyhub.com