“It got really dark out around noon. There were very strong winds, bending trees way over. It rained hard,” said Becker.

A day later, a high school wall collapsed, leaving a gaping hole, exposing building beams and other classroom furniture and school materials a pile early in the morning of June 25, 1974.

School board members, an electrician, construction company owner, a police officer and other passers-by were photographed looking at the ruins in a photo taken by New Ulm Daily Journal Regional Editor Gene Kiecker.

“A crashing sound was heard by a man who lived near the school at 5:45 a.m. When he walked outside, he noticed a large part of the school and an exterior wall had fallen. Bricks and steel lay scattered around the area. A huge gaping hole was visible in the wall and roof,” Kiecker wrote in a detailed story.

Journal file photo Spectators view the gaping hole and beams in the Fairfax High School building on June 25, 1974. The school board planned to ask voters on July 16, 1974 to approve a $1.78 million bond issue to replace the building that dates back to 1909, according to a New Ulm Daily Journal story.

Classes were out for the summer. Only custodians were doing an annual cleanup in the building believed to date back to 1909.

School board member Tom Brozik said the old part of the school was to be razed as part of a $1.78 million building project to be submitted to district voters July 16. The project called for a new school building including a gym and minor changes to newer parts of the school.

Brozik said he didn’t think the collapse would create any building changes.

“We were going to tear that part down anyway. Maybe this will help convince people that a bond issue is needed,” he said.

“Thunder” Dan Kuss, a 1974 Fairfax High graduate, said he remembers jogging through the first floor of the old edition of the high school with the football team on their way from the locker room or classroom to the football field.

“We bounced up and down on that first floor in my freshman and sophomore seasons. During our junior and senior years, we were told to go downstairs and run through the basement floor. It was pretty crazy,” said Kuss, who later played junior college football, joined the U.S. Air Force, worked as a journalist, Veteran’s Service Officer and sang in a rock and roll band.

Kathy “Bird” Berdan, a 1975 graduate, edited the high school newspaper and later worked for the Des Moines Register and St. Paul Pioneer Press. Her work has also appeared in Minnesota Monthly magazine.

She remembers the day the school collapsed rather vividly.

“Word about the school collapse was all over town when I got to the swimming pool for work that day. We rushed over to the school and looked in amazement. It could have been a huge tragedy if it happened a month earlier. I figured there were only three periods of the previous school year day that I would not have been in the part of the building that fell,” said Berdan.

“It wasn’t a total surprise. Everyone knew the building was in bad shape. We used to pound on the wall in the upper southeast corner classroom during the winter. Snow would drift in below the windows,” she said.

Berdan said the school and City of Fairfax did a great job shuffling classes and students around town when fall classes began.

“Of course, the Class of 1975 felt a little sorry for ourselves. We had no school building from which to graduate in the next spring. We graduated at the baseball park,” she said.

Retired Certified Public Accountant Mark Schaefer of Fairfax moved to Fairfax several years before the school fell.

“A couple months before it fell, people realized a new building was needed even though it was deemed safe by an architect from the Twin Cities,” he said.

The school board appointed a citizen’s committee to form an acceptable building plan to be presented to voters July 16.

“I remember Fairfax attorney John Carey’s involvement. The insurance company wasn’t going to pay the school district for the collapse. They said the school just deteriorated over time. Then we got Carey involved. He was new and had time to devote the school issue. I shared an office with him. Sometimes it was so slow in the office, we’d set up a waste paper basket and flip cards into it and see who could get the most cards in it,” said Schaefer.

He said Carey learned about the high winds prior to the collapse and took the data to the insurance company.

“He would have taken it to trial because he had the time then. I think the insurance people knew that and that Carey meant business. He got a huge settlement. Several hundred thousand dollars I think that was later used to pay off school bonds and came off Fairfax property owner’s taxes,” said Schaefer.

“We’ll just have to set up some kind of temporary thing for next fall,” said school board member Harold Deming in the Daily Journal story.

Indeed. A bond referendum passed and a new school was built. In the meantime, many students attended classes at various locations in town including church basements, the catholic school, fire hall and businesses.

“It was a lot more work and a sacrifice on everybody’s part. It went surprisingly well. Everybody had to cooperate to make it work. The kids cooperated by and large. They had to walk most of the time. Buses were sometimes used to transport them in the winter,” said Becker.

“I have a lot of good memories. So many good kids came through here. We had lots of good kids on the yearbook staff and school paper. Tom Erickson was the school paper advisor. They never missed a deadline in more than 20 years,” he said.

Roger Rogotzke, a 1976 Fairfax High School graduate, now a Gibbon Fairfax Winthrop (GFW) special education teacher and track coach, shared an interesting high school memory.

“I remember hopping up and down in the back corner of Mr. Becker’s keyboarding room and the whole floor would rock. That should have been an indiction to get out of there. I went to the ADC building (downtown Fairfax) for classes. I graduated in the ball park,” said Rogotzke.