The Rush County Historical Society will be hosting a dedication ceremony and ribbon cutting at 10:00 am on Saturday, May 25 at the museum complex on West 1st Street in La Crosse for the Pleasant Point School Museum and the Roger Greenway Memorial Flagpole.

Records for District 24, Pleasant Point School, date back to the 1880s. In 1907, George Sheets built the present building six and one-half miles south of the town of Nekoma in southwestern Rush County. After consolidation closed the school in the spring of 1959, the Seltman family, many of whom had attended the school, maintained the building and preserved nearly all of its original books and furnishings. In the fall of 2014, the owner of the building donated it and its contents to the Historical Society to ensure its preservation for future generations. On February 18, 2015, the Society moved it to the museum complex in La Crosse citing its value as “an educational resource to tell the story of a time when over 80 one-room schools dotted the landscape of Rush County.” In addition to its original collections, the school will also house collections from innovative pioneer educator Howard Barnard, founder of Entre Nous College near McCracken.

Members of the Greenway family donated the Roger Greenway Memorial Flagpole in memory of SSG Roger K. Greenway, great-grandson of William Mottern Greenway who homesteaded in Rush County in 1880. Staff Sergeant Greenway was born in La Crosse, Kansas on July 4, 1947 to Milford K. Greenway and Ruth Lebsack Greenway. He enlisted in the United States Army on March 27, 1968, began his tour in Vietnam on March 13, 1969, and was killed in action at Quang Tin Province, Vietnam on January 1, 1970. As part of the ceremony, the family will donate a collection of Greenway family records and photographs dating back over 100 years.

A collection of handmade toys built by Wesley, Harvey and Marvin Becker while they attended Pleasant Point School in the late 1920s will be on display during the dedication. The three brothers were serving in the United States Navy on the USS Arizona during the attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Wesley and Harvey went down with the ship but Marvin survived.