Her dedication to preserving the history of Buchanan County’s schools reflects a lifetime of service to education and community.
The following article, written by Chad Cooper and originally published by The Virginia Mountaineer, highlights Patty’s incredible accomplishment. We are honored to share it in full below.
After decades of serving both students and educators, retired Buchanan County Public Schools administrator Patty Lester Street has turned her passion for education and local history into a new book about schools across the county.
Street, who retired from the Buchanan County Public School system in 2012, recently published a new book titled “Schools of Buchanan County, Then and Now.” The book captures the history of the county’s schools through photographs, documents and historical research.
Street currently serves as an Associate Director of Student Services and Events Coordinator at the Appalachian School of Law, but her love for Buchanan County schools remains strong.
The 1978 graduate of Grundy Senior High began working in the school board office in August 1977, just one week into her senior year.
“I worked there for 35 years, and that is all I knew,” Street said. “I understood what Joyce Presley always told me, she said this is my life and it’s all I know. I always thought she was crazy, but then I thought, no, I under-stand, this is all I know. I left the school board then, and I came here, but I still loved the schools. That is where my heart will always be. Love this school too.”
The idea for the book traces back more than 25 years to a school calendar project that she helped create while working in the school board office.
“I used to work with Joyce Presley and Nancy Sykes, and I always did the school calendar,” Street said. “We got to where we was doing it through Clinch Valley Printing, making it nicer than running just a piece of paper. Joyce had kept these old pictures in a notebook back in the vault and I ran across them.I told her it would be good to set up a calendar.
“So me, Joyce and Nancy sat down together and worked in the evenings, and we made this school calendar with all the old school pictures in it. We did not realize how great people would love that, but they did. We had people out of state who used to live here send us messages wanting one of those calendars. We actually had to order more calendars.”
After she retired from the school system and started at the Appalachian School of Law, Street said she still felt a strong connection to the county’s schools. After a year of working at the law school, she began gathering photographs and researching the history of the schools throughout the county, simply for fun.
Street began collecting information in 2013, using numerous resources, including the Buchanan County Public Library, the archives of the Virginia Mountaineer and talking with the late Rodney Shortt, a former president of the Buchanan County Historical Society.
She said she also received assistance from former Buchanan County Public School superintendent Melanie Hibbitts, who was still with the school system at the time, and allowed her to scan some historical materials kept by the school system. Some of those items are also featured in Street’s book.
One day, Street discussed sending her book to print with her husband, Gary Street, who worked for Buchanan County Public Schools for 45 years. He supported her idea. Street said she wouldn’t find any new schools for a while, and then she would discover one.
“I would tell Gary that I believe this is all I am going to find – then I find something else,” Street said. “It came up to this year, and I said, ‘I have to get it out now, because they are going to consolidate and I do not want to go back and redo that book.” Street said she included in the book that consolidation was occurring, but the day she went to print, the Buchanan County School Board voted to include Council, so that piece of information will not be included. “I put a picture of the new school of what it is supposed to look like in the book,” Street added.
Like many new authors, Street discovered finding a way to get her book published was no easy task.
She said she knew that going with a big publisher like Amazon was not what she needed, as her book was written primarily for Buchanan County residents and those who used to live there.
“I thought I just didn’t know what to do, and the Lord just blessed me,” Street said. “Mark Coleman came here to work with us, and he has published a few books. He said it was more for family and things like that. And I said I am trying to get this book published, and I don’t know what to do. Then he gave me a website called lulu.com. I went through lulu.com to get the book published then. I don’t know if I would still have the book published if it wasn’t for him.”
Street thanked Coleman for all his help, gave him the first book and asked him to read it and see if there was anything she needed to fix. She said Coleman came back and said, “there is one thing you need to fix, put your name on the front of the book,” which led to a good laugh, Street added.
Street said she is extremely proud of the book and how it turned out, and that finishing it made her feel good. “I can look back on my life and think I have had a really good life in the things that I have done,” Street shared.
For Street, publishing “Schools of Buchanan County Then and Now” is another chapter in her own life, one that has preserved the history of schools and communities she has served for more than three decades.
-Chad Cooper, The Virginia Mountaneer
