Founder’s Day is celebrated on a Wednesday in mid-October each year. Did you ever wonder why the timing is so important and why we plant trees each year?

As you may have learned from last week’s Swain history blog, the Swain Campus was not always located at its current home on 24th Street. 

Here are a few words, excerpts from Mrs. Swain’s writing in 1979: 

“1100 South 24th Street was an alfalfa field when it was purchased as the site for our new Swain School home. So we started from scratch.

We held the ground breaking on August 7, 1950. It was my privilege to turn the first spadeful of earth, using an old garden shovel from our home. Since then that shovel has become a tradition. We shortened the handle so that even the youngest children could use it. We painted it and wrapped it with red ribbon and a bow. We have used it at ground breaking for each of the three new units added to the building and at every tree planting since the first Dedication Tree was planted on October 24, 1951.

Every year since that first tree was dedicated, we have added one or more trees to the campus.  … Each year at the Dedication Anniversary celebration [now known as Founder’s Day], students have added the lovely pink and white dogwoods. It is a great honor to be chosen as the class representative to add a shovelful of earth to the newly planted dogwood.”

This year, we will plant a new dogwood in honor of Mrs. Swain, and we will also continue to enhance the beauty of our school by adding several hardwood trees to replace those taken down in late summer due to illness or safety concerns. It fills my heart with joy to know that we are carrying on her legacy by keeping our campus beautiful, adding to the history with Mrs. Swain’s own shovel each year.