MOUNT VERNON – When Lacy Holt was hired five years ago to provide custodial and light maintenance duties at the Knox Learning Center, no one really needed to show her around.
After all, she spent six years there when the building was still Mount Vernon’s West Elementary School
“I was here from kindergarten through fifth grade,” she said, recalling her daily five-block walk to and from her home at the corner of West Burgess and Harrison streets – rain, snow or shine.
Mount Vernon vacated the building when Twin Oak Elementary opened in 2009. The three-story brick structure, which dates to 1915, then became the Knox Learning Center, a K-12 alternative school operated by the Knox Educational Service Center (ESC).
“I remember the classrooms and where I sat in each one,” Holt said during a brief break from disassembling shelving in a storage area. “The commons where the stage is was our gym and cafeteria. Lunches were delivered and kept in a warming oven, just as they are today.”
Does a particular memory stand out?
“Well, there was the time our fifth-grade classroom ceiling fell,” she said, laughing. “We weren’t in there when it happened. They prepared to move us to the music room in the basement (now Transition U) and told us they would paint the room any color we wanted. We chose purple.”
Holt went on to graduate from Mount Vernon High School via the culinary arts course at the Knox County Career Center. She worked in restaurants and decorated cakes. She still enjoys baking.
“Cheesecakes are my specialty,” she said. “I bake for the staff here and occasionally take special orders.”
Holt lives a few blocks west of the Learning Center on Vine Street. Her two sons, 21 and 18, completed the precision machining course at KCCC and are employed in the Mount Vernon area.
Actually, Holt works a split shift, Monday through Friday, beginning in the predawn darkness at the ESC’s preschool at the New Hope Early Childhood Center. She finishes cleaning there before staff and students arrive, then returns home before starting her 9:30-2:30 shift at the Learning Center.
Her daily routine encompasses cleaning on all three floors. During the summer she moves furniture in and out of classrooms to wax the floors, paints, patches concrete cracks on the playground and mows the lawn.
Learning Center Director Joe Mazzari said Holt is a valuable member of the staff in many ways.
“Lacy does a wonderful job. She takes good care of us, keeping the building clean,” Mazzari said. “But Lacy does more than that. She has a really good sense of talking and sharing with the kids. She makes a connection with them and that’s important.”
Holt welcomes interaction with students.
“Sometimes the kids just need someone to talk to,” she said, as she listens and lets them know that she and the entire staff care and want them to be successful.
“The older kids help me sometimes to earn community service seals on their diplomas. And they do the work. I make sure of that,” she said, smiling.
Some of the floors creak and there’s a crack in a wall here and there, but, by and large, the building endures, Holt said, thanks in large part to improvements made by the late Terry Walter, a contractor who volunteered his time.
“For being 110 years old, the building is in pretty good shape. It keeps me busy, though,” she said.
“Sometimes I stop and just look around and remember. It’s like stepping back in time.”