BY TOM O'NEILL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LEESBURG -- Landowner Olen Grandle today will turn rolling farmland where corn and soybean grow into a canvas for a far more important crop: school students' potential.
The 86-year-old Sycamore Township, Hamilton County man will stand next to an old barn with an aluminum roof and peeled white paint. He will look out over 112 sprawling acres near here and recall his country childhood.
And when he hands over the deed to school officials, he will harvest the dream of the entire Fairfield School District in Highland County, which is hoping to secure state funding for a new school but can't afford the land on which to build it.
Enter Mr. Grandle, who said Wednesday he just wanted to give "a little something back to my old school."
The value in money: $399,200.
The value in spirit: "This is a gift that will literally carry on forward for generations," schools Superintendent Scott Wilson said. "I just . . . sometimes it's just hard to believe. What a wonderful act of generosity."
In Mr. Wilson's vision, Mr. Grandle's land is home not only to a new kindergarten-through-12th grade building, but at least four ball fields and a facility for its agricultural program, which currently has no land for a crop lab.
Mr. Grandle, a University of Cincinnati graduate, took a job as a parking lot manager in 1947 when a thyroid condition forced him from his first love -- coaching high school football and basketball. Eventually he owned more than 50 parking lots, including 15 in Cincinnati. It made him a financially secure man.
Fairfield, on the northern edge of Highland County, is the 36th poorest among the state's 612 school districts, Mr. Wilson said. Its annual budget is $3.2 million. It has grown from 631 students in 1981 to 732 in 1991 to 841 this year. Within 10 years, the student population is expected to eclipse 1,000.
But it still uses the same school from which basketball-loving Mr. Grandle graduated in 1930 -- then named Leesburg High, now Fairfield High. Back then, there were 21 seniors. Mr. Grandle was the kid with the mean perimeter game who once dropped 32 points on an All-American from Georgetown, Ky. -- with Adolph Rupp watching.
"I never came close to scoring 32 points again," he said, shifting his cane as he smiled.
As quickly as he got lost in visions of the past, including working for his road-contractor father at age 9 and learning the farm trade, he returned to his visions of Leesburg's future.
"I was just about the only hope, and they certainly needed the new school," he said.
The district's two schools, the grade 7-12 high school and the kindergarten-through-sixth elementary school, have both had two additions since their construction in 1918 and 1916, respectively.
This year, three modular structures serve as elementary school classrooms. Students need to walk over to the main building to use the restrooms. Students are luckier at the high school, where there is only only one modular unit.
Officials from the Ohio Schools Facilities Commission will do an on-site evaluation of the district Friday. The commission might pay for up to 90 percent of building costs, Mr. Wilson said, but it won't cover land acquisition.
Health and physical education teacher Carol Kidd smiled at the idea of a new school Wednesday, as students shot baskets in the school's antiquated gym. Had they listened hard enough, they might have heard echoes of the kid Grandle scoring big.
He still is.
