Virgal Kesler had stories to spare

Virgal Kesler once moved an entire gymnasium 90 degrees without lifting a finger.
I reminded the last principal of Dunkirk High School and first principal of West Jay Junior High of that fact a couple of months ago when visiting at Miller’s Merry Manor.
I’d stopped by to see Virginia Conkling, the mother of my old friend Al, and learned that Virgal was in residence at Miller’s.
He had been dealing, he explained to me when I stopped by, with a wound that wouldn’t heal properly. It was, and I think I’m paraphrasing him correctly, a hole in his bony old butt that wouldn’t heal.
When it became too much for Ann to deal with the wound at their home in Dunkirk, a stay at Miller’s seemed the appropriate course of action. But it was clear from the start that Virgal knew he would never recover enough to go home.
And that was the only thing that seemed to cause a cloud to pass over his face.
On every other topic, he was engaged, he was enthused, he was opinionated, he was articulate, and he was as charming as ever.
Those Thursday visits became a habit this spring, and I found myself looking forward to them. I’d stop by to check on Virginia and make sure she was doing okay, but I have to confess that Virgal and Ann were much more entertaining company.
It was on the first visit when — after getting far too much information from Virgal about the hole in his bony old butt than I needed — I reminded him of the time he moved an entire gymnasium.
It was back in the early 1980s or maybe even the late 1970s. Jay Schools had finally come to the conclusion that the former Dunkirk High School building was insufficient for West Jay Junior High School.
More than a dozen candidates had filed for four open seats on the school board that year, and when the newspaper questionnaire posed the question, “What should be done about West Jay, the oldest building in the school corporation?” Every single one of them said that it should be replaced.
Remarkably, given today’s school finance situation, Jay Schools had more than $3 million in its cumulative capital projects fund. In other words, it had enough money in its savings account to buy a new school in Dunkirk.
And after the election, there were four out of seven votes to do just that.
I’m not sure what architectural firm was hired, but I remember that the architect on the project was a guy named Charlie Parrot. (You remember a name like that, even if you’re not sure how he spelled his last name.)
As part of the process, he brought proposed floorplans and drawings to a school board meeting, seeking approval to move forward.
Virgal Kesler, principal, was at the meeting.
He and the board listened to what Charlie had to say, then someone on the board asked Virgal for his reaction.
You know, he said, there’s a problem with the gym. The way it’s shown in the drawings, people would be walking along the lines at one end of the court to get to and from the restrooms. Wouldn’t it, Virgal asked, make sense to rotate it 90 degrees so that there wouldn’t be that sort of traffic and distraction during a game?
To his credit, Charlie the architect knew a good idea when he heard one. He thought for a moment, realized there was enough space on the site, and without a moment’s hesitation agreed to Virgal’s suggestion to rotate this huge — but unbuilt — space so that it was more functional and made better sense.
Virgal got a laugh out of the story when I recounted it at Miller’s earlier this year, and he had me laughing with stories of his own.
His stories were always better, but he was too much of a gentleman to say that.
My only regret is that I didn’t get to hear more of them.