CityView Magazine - Fayetteville, NC
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/8998
Above | Now she is a Fayetteville real estate agent, but in 1964, Jane Hollinshed was a student in Grace Hicks’ kindergarten class. She is seated on the second row, third from the left. Left | Joseph P. Riddle III as a Holy Trinity kindergartner. Lawyers, doctors, brokers, bankers, builders and developers, they all had their start at the Holy Trinity sand table. Hand- print turkeys at Thanksgiving, Popsicle stick works of art and finger-painted masterpieces, these were the building blocks. “It was a good place to go to school,” Hasty said. Before public schools routinely offered it, Hasty attended kindergarten at Holy Trinity, and he fondly remembers the day he tried to bring a frog along for the car ride home. “After all these years,” he said, “it’s a bit of a landmark in the community.” On April 18, Holy Trinity Preschool will commemorate 50 years of educating and nurturing Fayetteville children. Alison Jones is chairwoman of the school’s current board, which is organizing a celebration and reunion. “We’re hoping to get as many people back as possible,” she said. “This school has meant so much to so many for so long.” Holy Trinity Episcopal Church opened its kindergarten in September 1959. 62 | April/May • 2010 When public schools followed suit, the school adapted by focusing on children with special needs. Later, it adapted once again by offering pre-school classes for children ages 2 to 4. Today, the school has about 60 toddlers enrolled. Jane March Riddle is one of them. For more than 25 years, her father, Joseph P. Riddle III, has worked in and around Fayetteville as a general contractor and real estate broker. There is a 50-year age gap between them, giving Riddle a unique perspective on the school’s long history. He was in one of the school’s earliest kindergarten classes – now his own child attends the school. “I remember how much fun the playground was,” he said and perhaps as a sign of what was to come, “Also, I loved playing with those big cardboard bricks. I was always building things with them. A lot of places don’t make it 50 years. Fifty years is a long time. A lot of things come and go.” But not Holy Trinity Preschool. Like many a beloved school, behind