Liberty High Last Reunion
HARTINGTON — With the last graduating class moving through the doors 55 years ago, Liberty High School held its last reunion earlier this month.
According to reunion organizer Don Wakeley, the reunion, which was held at the VFW in Hartington, saw over 40 people in attendance.
Graduates and their spouses came from all over the country with the farthest travelers coming from Oregon and North Carolina.
The classes represented spanned 12 years with graduates from as far back as 1939 to 1951.
Liberty High School opened its doors in 1935 in the Pleasant Valley area 11 miles west of Hartington.  The school held classes for all 12 grades until 1951 when the high school was shut down.
The first graduating class of Liberty High in 1937 was a class of three.  Liberty High educated the youth of the Pleasant Valley area through part of the Great Depression and saw many of its graduates head off to serve their country in World War II.
With a population shift to urban areas following the war, Liberty High saw declining enrollment through the late 1940s. With a graduating class of three, the high school was forced to close its doors in 1951 ending its era as one of the last of its kind in Cedar County.
Grade school was taught at Liberty School until 1964 when District 107 merged with the Bloomfield School District.  The building was purchased in the same year by the Laurel Golf Course where it was moved, and has served as the clubhouse since.
Alumni have gathered together every two years since the mid-1960s to share memories of the time they spent at the country school. 
Wakeley, who is a 1941 graduate, said people have been coming back for reunions all these years because of the closeness and a common bond they feel with one another.
“It was a country high school,” Wakeley said, “Everyone was kind of like a small family.”
Although this is the last reunion for Liberty High School, the surviving graduates will always have a fondness for the people and experiences they had within its walls, Wakeley said.