Dauphin Island Diaries
A long-form history podcast focused on the people, places, and stories that shaped Dauphin Island and the Alabama Gulf Coast.
Dauphin Island Diaries
DID Bonus INTERVIEWSDAY Material (4) - Interview with Connie Roan
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It's INTERVIEWSDAY!
This week on INTERVIEWSDAY (Interview Tuesday), we visit with Connie Roan, a longtime educator who spent the final years of her remarkable 44-year teaching career at Dauphin Island's historic Little Red Schoolhouse. Although the building now serves as the island's Welcome Center and museum, Connie shares firsthand memories of teaching during the school's final years and offers a fascinating look at how both the school and the island have changed over the decades.
Among the topics we discuss:
- Connie's 44-year teaching career and why retirement didn't last very long.
- The history of the Little Red Schoolhouse from its construction in 1930 through its retirement as an active school building.
- Why the school was moved twice and the remarkable logistics involved in relocating the historic structure.
- What it was like teaching on Dauphin Island during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
- The school's growth from roughly 70–80 students to approximately 120 students during Connie's tenure.
- How the building earned the nickname "The Little Red Schoolhouse."
- Hurricane Frederic, Hurricane Katrina, and the remarkable durability of the historic building.
- Stories of island students once traveling by boat and boarding on the mainland to attend high school.
- Preserving portions of the original school inside today's Welcome Center.
- The Welcome Center's role as the island's museum, library, gathering place, and community hub.
- Connie's reflections on watching former students return years later with children of their own.
Connie's memories bring the Little Red Schoolhouse to life and remind us that historic buildings are more than lumber and brick. They are places where generations of stories were lived before they were ever recorded.
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Okay, so we are doing Dolphin Island Diaries. We're going to be talking um about the Little Red Schoolhouse. This is an interview with Mrs. Connie Roan. Today's date is February 6th, 2026. We are actually sitting, you're going to hear uh as part of this some ambient noise in the background, you're going to hear voices that aren't ours. Um we're actually sitting in the welcome center in the museum on Dauphin Island. And the interesting thing about that, for those of you who are not familiar with this, is that the Welcome Center is what used to be the Little Red Schoolhouse. And uh Miss Ms. Roone is uh I'm very pleased that she's willing to talk with us about this. She's sitting at a uh you know there's a there's actually a an exhibit in the corner of the museum where it you set up to be a uh a little school classroom. Uh and that's important and it's it's uh relevant because she taught in this school building. And so really glad that you're that you're uh taking part in this, uh Ms. Connie. I really appreciate you doing this.
SPEAKER_00Sure. I'm always happy to talk about the little red schoolhouse. Some very happy days I spent teaching here.
SPEAKER_02So so how and and I I'm I realize this is probably not an appropriate question to ask, but how many years did you did you teach?
SPEAKER_00Well I I taught 44 years, but only the last 11 were here. I had already retired from teaching, and um I got bored with retirement early on, and I was volunteering here. I had done elementary science, and so I would come over an afternoon or two a week and teach elementary science activities with the children. And um that in May of that year, the principal collin she said, Well, we'd like you to teach again next year. And I said, Oh sure, I I love doing it. And she said, No, we mean a full-time and we'll pay you. And I said, gee, I've retired? I'm not sure. Let me think about this. And I did, I discussed it with my husband, and I decided to go ahead and go back to work. The big difference is when I taught in Rhode Island, it was a half-hour commute on good days, an hour and a half on snowy days. And uh this is three minutes from my home. And it was a great way to meet the people in the community and get to know people through their children. So it was a good decision, and I enjoyed teaching in your lot.
SPEAKER_02So d now the to to give some background for the listeners on this, and and of course, we'll be covering this in our in our podcast episode. This is actually going to be bonus material, what you and I are doing right now. But the school itself was built in 1930 and it closed in 2015. That is quite a long period of time. Of course, it started out over near where the goat trees were, over near Indian Mountains, Indian Shell Mounds, and then moved down to where the current down toward West Beach is where the the current elementary school is, and that's where this building was moved to.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02Were you still part of that school, you know, was teaching at the school when it closed, or did you stop with it?
SPEAKER_00The school didn't uh never closed. They just replaced this building.
SPEAKER_02That's what I mean. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So no, I had retired uh several years before that.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So the the if I remember correctly from when I was here last fall, there was an interesting story about them moving it here.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Because where it is at, where where the where the where the elementary school is now um is where this building used to be, and it's not where it is now. It's directly across from the the city hall on Benville Boulevard now. Right. Um it's almost up at the at the crossroads where the where the um causeway comes across from the from the mainland to the island. The building's a little bit wider than the bridge that you have to go across to get here, if I remember correctly.
SPEAKER_00Well, I see, I wasn't there. They cut the building in three parts in order to move it. And it was the second time it had been cut because when they moved it from the shell mounds, they cut it in the same three pieces. So they had to cut the building in three parts to move it down here.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And it w they let all the children walk down the road and follow their school right to where it is now, so they could see it. Because these kids had all been in this school.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00And then they built the new one and now they're in their classrooms in the new building, but they remembered when they were here. So they all walked down the street following the building as it came down.
SPEAKER_02And the the other interesting thing is for those who don't know who have not been to the island, is that the new elementary school was built to resemble this building. It actually, I mean, it's much larger, of course. And it's you know, it's it's but but the the the architectural style was meant to mimic the old style. It it there's that that that feeling of the heritage continuing through. Um and but the the thing I was remembering, and it may have been someone different, I was thinking it was you that had told me that they had it on the moving blocks, and when they got to the bridge it was too wide, and it actually had a piece that tilted it just enough to where it could make it through the the the sides of the bridge.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02And then they as soon as they got it over, they took it back to level. But I mean, just it was a quite a balancing act.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And see, I lived farther up here, so I was just about across the street when they moved it, so I did not see that part.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And and of course I was chatting with all the children who had come to see.
SPEAKER_02Sure, sure. So so tell me what it was like in teaching in this building, because it was much smaller than what we're dealing with today. You know, certainly was not built to to the standards that we are that we see schools built today in terms of classrooms and such.
SPEAKER_00Right. Well, I mean, initially the school had one through twelve, and the the big kids were on one side and the little kids on the other. By the time I got here, they only had two classrooms in here. It was the kindergarten and first grade. They had the school library, the principal's office, and then all of the rest of the classes were in portables around the horseshoe driveway. So I did not actually teach in this building. Uh my kids came in here for library to use the restrooms because we didn't have those, and then they had an all-purpose room in the back that was where they had their lunch.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00They did not cook here at that time. They brought the lunches in from Bayou Labattery, and the kids a lot of them brought lunch, so they ate lunch in the room in the back.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And so that explains something I was wondering about is that you know, just how much the school population had grown because obviously it's much larger now than what it would have been when this was built.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02And it was that was true even when you were teaching.
SPEAKER_00Even when I was teaching, I think we had probably 70 or 80 kids.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And when I retired, we had 120 kids.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow. Yeah. So it had nearly doubled in that time.
SPEAKER_00Right. And and they had built an addition out to the side that um, well, all our classrooms opened onto a deck, which was something different that they hadn't done in Mobile County before. And so when they were ready to build that addition and get rid of all those portables, the other teachers and I went over to Pensacola because they had a school on the beach over there, and we looked at theirs, and we got together and designed how we wanted our new addition. So it was built with the deck connecting it to this building, and then all the classrooms and the nice new library all opened onto the deck. So we had an indoor-outdoor kind of school. The kids could go sit on the deck and read, or we could do science experiments on the deck. We did all kinds of things on the deck. So it just opened up our classrooms to the outside.
SPEAKER_02That is that that is interesting. I mean, the you know, and of course, with some of the issues today with school safety and how you have to have everything so uh incredibly enclosed. Most of the buildings I see in Tennessee where I live, a lot of them don't even have windows.
SPEAKER_00And it was different.
SPEAKER_02I mean, and so that's yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that was um that was a while back. I don't know that the kids are allowed to do things on the deck anymore. Possibly some, but uh the way the way things are now, you know, you have to be careful. But but back then, I mean, even for field trips, you would call four or five parents and put the kids in their cars, and that's how we did field trips.
SPEAKER_02I did we did the same thing. I mean I can remember several different things.
SPEAKER_00And it was our um so relaxed, you know, and we would caravan to wherever we would go, and the mother who was driving that car would keep up with her four or five children, and each parent would take a few kids, and you know, we would be together on the field trip, but the driving back and forth would be in cars, and that stopped after a while. You had to have uh school buses, which raised the cost of the field trips a lot, and permission slips. Well, we always had permission slips, but but it was it was very different when I first came here.
SPEAKER_02So so again, uh hesitate to ask this, but give me an idea of what what time period we're talking about here.
SPEAKER_00I came here I believe in ninety-eight.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And stu probably started teaching full-time in ninety-nine.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And then up until probably twenty ten.
SPEAKER_02So not too terribly long before they completely phased this out then. That was in twenty fifteen.
SPEAKER_00So not uh yeah, so I had retired uh probably about five years before.
SPEAKER_02So tell me what what comes to mind to me is what you just said in terms of those time of those years, that time period. I was working, I've been working in IT for many years. I started working in IT in the early to mid-90s. So of course, 98, 99, the Y2K buck. How did that factor into your teaching? How much was that a thing in in those days for kids that age? Maybe not at all.
SPEAKER_00Not much, because we didn't have computers in our classrooms at that time.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00They had a few computers in the library, and in fact, that's how I got to know the principal and the teachers. I had dealt with computers a little bit when I taught in Rhode Island, and I thought, well, they had a senior computer classes after school, and so I came down to investigate and see if I could learn a little bit more about computers in the process, met the teachers and the principal, and that's when we got to talking and they invited me to come and work. So at that time, the children just would come in the library and kind of should I say play on computers. And so how did that it uh Y2K, I it wasn't a big thing.
SPEAKER_02Right. Well, I just you know, the the thing I remember was all the the the people were afraid that the electric systems were down. I mean and and and you know, having worked in IT, there was a lot that we had to do to prepare for that.
SPEAKER_00Well, see, if it had happened later when the teachers' lesson plans and all the attendance was on the computer, it would have been different. But at that time, Mobile County um, Mobile County wasn't doing that much with computers other than a little experimenting and just kind of introducing kids, this is a computer, this is what it can do.
SPEAKER_02That's um it's it's interesting at how in such a short time that technology has become so pervasive into the classroom. And it's necessary given the world that we live in today, obviously, but um I mean, because when we're talking about I could not have conceived of using AI, I use AI all the time and the stuff I do.
SPEAKER_00Well, when I retired, not only was I doing lesson plans and keeping grades on the computer and attendance, but then they introduced the the big wall computers into the classroom. So my last semester or the last year, I had to learn this whole new technology of teaching with this great big wall computer and learning how to use it. And actually after I'd retired when I'd go back and substitute occasionally, I would let the kids do it because they were way better at it than I was. Kids seem to pick that up so much easier. They're born with it now almost.
SPEAKER_02So I in in when I was a kid, it was you know, your your kids can program your VCR for you. Kids today don't even know how to spell VCR, let alone program one. But but they can they can they can write code, you know, when they're already uh, you know, in in gra in grade school. So let's talk about the longevity of this of this building. I mean it was started, I mean, it replaced, correct me if I'm wrong, but there was a a previous school building that had burned.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. And and and then they built this one. And uh and it wasn't red back then either. In fact, uh I I met a gentleman whose wife had been the principal here, and and I don't remember what year it was, but she is the one who decided to have it painted red because she said I always wanted to teach in a little red schoolhouse, and so she had the building painted red. Hence, we now have the name, and it's been called the Little Red Schoolhouse for a lot of years, but um it has gone from a two-room school to having separate classes for everything from K through six and now K through five, and to having the principal's office and the library incorporated over here. And then they built that extra, what they call an all-purpose room on the back of the building. That one didn't survive the move. Um Hurricane Katrina put a lot of water under it, and the water stood and it rotted and had termites. So when they moved the rest of the school, they did not move the all-purpose room. But it was original to the school anyway.
SPEAKER_02And and so that's that's an interesting thing. What you just said there. The durability of this building is remarkable because it was built in 1930, it survived now two moves.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It survived World War II, it survived the growth of the island. I mean, when it was built was was was twenty five years before the first bridge was built. Right. Um and and so it but it predated the the development of the island, it predated the Air Force base being on the island. And it also survived things like Hurricane Frederick in 79, which really devastated this island and Katrina.
SPEAKER_00It did. Well, and in um Hurricane Frederick in 79 took the bridge out. So the teachers had to come over in a boat and uh be ferried back and forth, which was difficult to say the least. And then and the uh one of our the teacher aide at the school, who was also our traffic officer, Miss Joyce, had been the teacher aide when the school was uh in the earliest days. And she tells the story, she would come in and talk to the kids and tell them about the olden days at the school. And when she was a child and attended school, uh then it got to the point that for high school they would go over to buy you the battery, and they would take her over in the boat on Monday morning. Her dad would take her over, and she boarded with a family over there during the week, and on Friday afternoon her dad would pick her up and bring her back to the island for the weekend. So there was a period of time there when the school did only go up to maybe eighth grade, and then the high school kids would have to leave the island as they do now. But back then it was by boat and it was much more and she would really hate it if it was stormy and her dad couldn't come over on Friday and pick her up because she wouldn't get to come home that weekend.
SPEAKER_02Right. So and and then I would think that if there was an expectation of storms for Sunday night or Monday morning when she would have been going back, you don't get to come home this weekend.
SPEAKER_00Well, and uh that was true, but uh at that time they didn't have the weather prediction that we have now, so it was it would have been you know it would have been a little more uh yeah spotty. Yeah, I would say. But uh yeah, the school has survived and is still in pretty good shape.
SPEAKER_02It really is. I mean, obviously it's had work done. I mean the floor that I'm seeing underneath me here now, this looks like it's it was new when we moved it. Right, yeah, it's it's this is this is not the original wood, obviously.
SPEAKER_00But we we did find out most recently we maintained the little girls' room and the little boys' ro restrooms from the old school, and now we're finding some rot under the men's room. I just put a sign on it that said, do not enter. You're gonna have to do some work with that.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02But but I mean the fact that it's lasted this long and and the interesting thing too, I mean, this is this is one of those things where it's found new life and new purpose because it's now the welcome center here on the island. It's there's a library in here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And and there there are some some pretty, you know, pretty neat activities that happen here.
SPEAKER_00We do, and it it's it's almost like a a meeting place. People who live here, they come in for the library and they'll stop and sit and have a cup of coffee and chat for a while. People will just stop in to say hello, what's going on on the island today. We have a bulletin board, we try to keep up with all the news of the island, and so people can come in here and check out and see what's going on. And of course, we have visitors from all over the world, mostly the United States. A lot of snowbirds come down to get away from the cold and snow in the winter, and so we have a vibrant snowbird community and they they come in, they help out in the churches, they help out here at the Welcome Center. And uh they come on Fridays to play music.
SPEAKER_02And that was what I was going to say. You've got here in just a couple hours you've got something that's going to be Yes.
SPEAKER_00Every Friday afternoon from one to three we have a jam session. And whoever wants to come and play can come and play and sing. And we also have a large audience. People come in and sit. They may not stay the whole time. They may sit for a few minutes and listen. And it's another great community activity.
SPEAKER_02And then we touched on in the beginning that this is the museum. This is actually a great museum. This has been a resource for me as I've been researching the podcast for a number of different topics. I mean you've got stuff in here on Sand Island Lighthouse, a lot of stuff on the Lighthouse which is it's probably the best resource I've seen central resource for that. But you've got, I mean sitting here right behind us, we've got all the stuff on the Battle of Mobile Bay. I'm looking right here in front of me at Admiral Buchanan who was the Confederate Admiral that was on the the Tennessee. I want to bring that out since I was from Tennessee of the Confederate fleet. And then of course over here to the left is Admiral Farragut who was the Admiral of the Union fleet who was born in Tennessee.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02So you've got a lot of connections do have a lot of connections and that was that was the interesting thing when I first started doing you know the plans for the podcast it was really in the in the beginning for me it was just going to be about Tennessee history. We came down here to visit on vacation we fell in love with the place this is this is where my wife and I want to retire one day. This is this you know this felt like home away from home that we we love it down here.
SPEAKER_00It's a wonderful community it's a very caring community. Yes I mean you know something bad happens to someone they have more food than they can use people bring food they come and help out it's just people are wonderful in my mind.
SPEAKER_02Well the Tennessee connection was what I was going to say I couldn't believe how much of a Tennessee connection there was down here because um you know you have the things that we just mentioned we also um the the sea trials of the first ever combat submarine which was designed by the Confederates the sea trials of it took place in Mobile Bay right off the coast over here. It was designed by a guy from Gallatin Tennessee H.O. Humleaf from Tennessee I did not know that. So so there's so much Tennessee connection here and so it's like yeah I I gotta do some there's too much going on down there uh that I can't ignore uh and and so then I got to do to looking at the the history of the island itself and it's just absolutely fascinating.
SPEAKER_00It really is yeah so so so that's you know kind of how we we got started to do this kind of this kind of um project here and and so really really appreciate your time today and I appreciate your insight and you sharing your experiences uh with us and and and you know what you were talking about that small town another thing I think that's really neat it hasn't always been this way obviously um before Hurricane Frederick there was a holiday inn on the island that's what they tell me but um it was destroyed in Hurricane Frederick and I don't think it was ever rebuilt but the way that the the city um leaders handle things now there are very few almost no chains everything is a local business they they really want to promote the local business and and not turn it into uh uh a tourist trap kind of thing it's the people live here this is their home and and um even to the point of um I think last fall there was some talk about uh uh an ordinance being passed that restricted how much people could buy homes simply for the purpose of like Airbnb stuff right the short term rentals we worry about because it's pricing the island out of the range of young families and if there are no young families there are no children for school and so we lose the school and um it's it's always been an important part of the community. Yes so we we we want to make it friendly for young families to come as well as I mean it's a retirement community there are a lot of old people living here. Sure but we we want to keep that family flavor here on the community and those community those people who are the natives to here I mean I when we when we come down when that time happens that we're able to move down here whenever that is that is you know we're we're gonna be transplants which and and you're a transplant I'm a transplant I people say how long I've lived here 25 years but no I'm not a native I know some natives they're really nice people I have great friends who were natives I love them but I'll never be a native right well that's you know if you didn't start here you can't be a native that's right so but but I mean that's that's the thing is you know you you you don't want to push the people who were here first out. Well and and their children and grandchildren who will also be natives here as well at that point.
SPEAKER_02So so yeah that so it's it's really it's really um I I love the direction that they're going with that and that was I mean the you know the the only two chains I can think of well there's actually three now that I can think of on the island.
SPEAKER_00The gas stations the two gas stations you know with the Circle K and the Chevron and then the Renaissance Bank and it didn't start as a as a chain no they bought out it was bought out but but I mean there are there are Renaissance banks in Tennessee so oh really yes ma'am that's a chain well we did have a local bank because one of my high school friends had helped to start it over in Mississippi and it was here for a while but Renaissance bought them out so and that's that's the way things tend to go in that industry.
SPEAKER_02So um so I'm gonna I'm gonna borrow a trick from Dan Rather.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02So we're both old enough to remember Dan Rather. Oh yes so one of the things that he liked to ask at the end of an interview what have I not asked you that I should have asked you.
SPEAKER_00I can't think of a thing I I don't know I I will say that I had some of my happiest teaching years here. Okay in my later years older and wiser maybe but it was such a community school I got to know the families I I taught children and then their younger brothers and sisters and now that I've lived here on the commu in the community longer I'm seeing my students children come here into the Welcome Center and use the library. So it's it's fun to see them grow up into successful citizens of our community.
SPEAKER_02And stay. And stay yes because you know the small communities you know well so many of them aren't able to stay.
SPEAKER_00Right. And that's the sad thing.
SPEAKER_02Especially if they go off to college and then they end up with a job somewhere in another state or something then then they you know they it's um and and um someone that is in here that I hope that we'll have an opportunity to talk to that has made that full circle and coming back Shari. Ms. Shari Moon Okay yes yes um she talked about that that family connection here and and coming back here even though she grew up elsewhere but she's in pictures of of the of the bridge out here on the walls right yeah yeah she is so yeah we're glad she came back so well uh I want to say thank you so much so very much the opportunity I've enjoyed doing it I I have enjoyed talking with you and and and I know that this is going to be something that people are going to enjoy listening to I hope so so thank you so very much and um God bless you for for what you're doing here and and the work that everybody's doing and keeping the the memories alive because without people like us ensuring that they are told again they die. They die. That's true. So so so thank you.
SPEAKER_00Okay thank you