In the fall of 1894, the Dent Public School opened its doors and essentially ushered out the era of one-room schoolhouses in Dent, OH, a small town in Southwest Ohio (specifically the Green Township region). Providing top-notch education for grades kindergarten through 12th grade, the Dent School rapidly became renowned as an outstanding educational institution and received numerous accolades for their quality staff, which featured some of the finest teachers, headmasters and custodians over the years. For the earliest part of the 20th Century, this praise continued in abundance and seemed to be the hallmark for the Dent School and its staff. When Horace Graham took over as Headmaster of the Dent Public School, he was insistent on not only maintaining the elite status the school had acquired, but publicizing this success by allowing for regular tours of the schoolhouse in an effort to give regular townspeople, parents of current students and families of prospective students a first-hand look at the facility and all that it had to offer. This was especially the case when the Dent Public School finally received the prestigious Ohio Educational Award for being one of the best educational establishments in the state of Ohio in 1940. Although Headmaster Graham occasionally led visitors on guided tours through the schoolhouse himself, more often then not he assigned this duty to the school’s resident janitor, Charles McFree. McFree, who was also referred to as “Uncle Charlie†by a select few, was an emaciated and relatively diminutive individual who had been in charge of janitorial duties at the schoolhouse for several years prior to the 1940s
