SOMERVILLE, Ala. (AP) - Union Hill School’s old cafeteria will always have a special place in the heart of Melissa Johnson, a reading specialist at the school. She met her husband, Keith, in the cafeteria, and it’s where he eventually proposed to her.
“My husband taught the gifted children, and so he was touring, going from different schools. … We had lunch together, and that’s how we first met,” she said.
Union Hill School’s nearly 60-year-old cafeteria was demolished in November after a new one was built beside it. Johnson and other employees were sad to see the old cafeteria go.
Johnson said that after Keith was hired permanently at Union Hill and they started dating, she gave him an ultimatum to propose before the end of the school year, so as not to confuse her students with a name change the following fall. On the last day of the 1992-1993 school year, he proposed to her in the cafeteria.
“I had decided he wasn’t going to propose to me, because I had just been so adamant about, if you’re going to propose you’re going to have to do it before school’s out. The very last day, he comes into the cafeteria with a dozen roses and asks me to marry him,” Johnson said.
Johnson, who then taught fifth and sixth grade reading and science, said the proposal was met with excitement from her students.
“Every one of the kids that I taught was in the lunchroom. They were chanting, they started yelling. Some of them thought we were married because he proposed to me. Some of them got confused over that. … One little girl said, ‘I wanna see the ring, I wanna see the ring,’ so she ran up, because the ring was in the box, and I handed it to her, and she held it up like that,” Johnson said, raising her arms in the air. “It was very special.”
Johnson, who started teaching at the school in 1988, said word of their engagement spread quickly throughout Morgan County Schools.
“Back in those days, we didn’t have all the intercoms or anything like that. By the time I left the cafeteria, everybody in the school knew he proposed to me, and since my husband was teaching the gifted, his office was at the county office,” she said. “Somebody from here had called the county office. Everybody at the county office knew, and I said, ‘We don’t need any kind of intercom system, because word travels way too fast around here.’”
Johnson said seeing the demolition of the old cafeteria in November was a sad moment.
“I was sad to see the building go,” she said. “But, I actually ended up slipping three bricks off of the school. One for myself and then one (each) for my two children, who could care less right now - they’re in their 20s - and one day that might mean something to them.”
Morgan County Schools facilities and maintenance director Kevin Humphries said the original cafeteria was built in 1963, and an addition was constructed in 1994. The new cafeteria was completed in October, spokeswoman Lisa Screws said.
Jenny Prince, a child nutrition program employee at Union Hill, was also sad to see the building go. She said all four of her children attended Union Hill, and she has three grandchildren who also attend the school or will when they’re old enough.
“I have worked at the school for about 17 years, always as a CNP,” Prince said. “We had a lot of good memories here. All of my children went here, and now my grand-babies.”
Prince, a Huntsville native who has lived in Union Hill for 30 years, said while she’s glad to have a new, spacious lunchroom to work in, she has fond memories of working in the old one.
“I can say we always have shown the kids love, just giving them hugs and letting them know they are all special in their own way. (There’s) nothing like seeing a child with a big smile,” Prince said. “I love the new lunchroom, it’s so very nice. I’m loving having all new equipment to work with, and the extra space is amazing. I can’t wait ’til the kids are back in here eating. I have really missed seeing them.”
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