By Angel Perkins Correspondent
When someone mentions history to children their eyes often begin to glaze over but not so for the 20 Triton Elementary fourth graders who signed up to join the local Yellowstone Trail Little Hoosiers Club. For them, learning about Indiana’s heritage really is a blast...from the past.
Once a month the club members stay after school to attend meetings with leaders and educators Laura Reese and Sharon Bules who take them back in time allowing them to experience first hand moments that are only remembered in books or by historians.

The group visits the local Summit Chapel Schoolhouse Marshall County’s only restored school house (built in 1842) which in Oct. 4, 2008 was admitted in to the Department of Interior’s National Register of Historic places where historical society volunteer Norma Montgomery used to portray the typical “school marm” of that century. They learn what a typical school day entailed and get to sit at authentic antique desks featuring ink wells for their quill pens.
Bules explains that aside from reciting the club pledge the students involved use a lot of creativity while learning, making “Indian bread,” stringing “Indian beads” and drawing Native American villages. “We’ve had overnight camp-outs at the woods at Ancilla,” she said. “We used to have the entire fourth grade involved,” said Reese.
The state-group started at Triton with former principal Kathy Swartz and has been going on since 1987. Reese has given 20 years of volunteerism to the initiative and Bules has given eight. “We elect officers (a president, vice president, secretary and historian) said Reese. “And we used to sponsor Pioneer Days.”
During those annual days that were geared to coincide with Grandparent Day, the senior generation would visit the school and experience what the children had learned, seeing them in costume and watching them press cider, tell stories, sell beaded jewelry and they could enjoy fresh popcorn or cinnamon “mouse ears” while listening to story tellers or after playing pioneer games or dipping their own candles.
No longer the tradition, Triton’s Little Hoosiers still get plenty of fun incorporated into learning listening to speakers dressed in historical garb, visiting cemeteries to take rubbings of gravestones during a scavenger hunt (looking for the oldest person or the family with the most members buried there) or taking a ride on Purdue University’s “Boilermaker Special,” a resemblance of a Victorian-era railroad locomotive built on a truck chassis.
“We’ve won first place with an inflatable cabin at the (state) Little Hoosiers convention,” explained Reese. “We also raised $1,000 to have the 10th step (of 330) preserved at the Soldiers and Sailors monument in Indianapolis.”
While both women agree they may have learned just as much as they’ve taught they both agree that watching the children being enthused about learning is the best activity they’ve seen. “I used to love the overnights but it takes a lot of work,” said Reese.
Last Thursday, the fourth graders listened to a presentation by Becca Loofbourrow, coordinator for the Indiana Historical Society. “I give three or four presentations a week for the junior historical society,” she explained. “They begin at the fourth grade level but I speak with students through 12th grade.”
Reese said they could branch out to the older grades at Triton but haven’t found any interest or sponsors willing to promote it. Thursday Loofbourrow showed slides of what remains of the building built by Madame C.J. Walker’s daughter, adjacent to her factory which was located on the corner of West and Indiana Avenue in Indianapolis. It now includes a beauty shop as well as a museum to honor the first African American, and first woman, to become a millionaire-her fortune built on her salesmanship and dedication to her line of beauty products which included hair growing shampoo, pressing oil (glossine) and tetter salve amongst other items.
Loofbourrow invited the Triton children to divide into teams to create their own (imaginary) hair product, choose a name, a gimmick, a sales price and to give a sales presentation of the product before their peers.