Graysville (360) Built 1927
October 14, 2025
My wife laments that my musical tastes are that of a man decades older than I actually am. I guess she's not really wrong. I basically just cycle through Springsteen, Mellencamp, and the Eagles throughout the course of a year with a few other acts sprinkled in. Since she despises most of what I listen to, it makes for some fun battles over control of the Spotify on car rides. The one other person I've fallen in love with over the last few years that she can sometimes tolerate is Johnny Cash. He went on a run of albums over the course of the last five to ten years of his life that speak to me in a way that's hard to understand. During that period of his life, his health was rapidly declining. He lost the ability to perform, make any public appearances, and eventually even walk. The one thing he was able to do until the very last days though, was sing, and he did. Most of the songs he put out during this time were about death, dying, and what kind of legacies people leave behind when they go. I think my wife does find it a little morbid that I love so many of these songs that deal with these issues when God-willing, I'm hopefully not near the time when I need to reckon with them anytime soon. I think it's the knowledge that he was recording these songs while staring death in the face that strikes and sticks with me when I listen to them. The last song he ever recorded, just a couple days before he passed, is called Engine One-Forty-Three. It's about a young conductor who doesn't heed the cautious advice of his mother and is injured badly in a train crash. Instead of trying to be saved by the doctor, he chooses to pass away peacefully, knowing he will go doing what he loved. The tune being played behind the lyrics is upbeat, which creates a sonic juxtaposition that grabs my ear everytime I listen to it. Johnny Cash, and this song in particular, were on my mind as I drove down to Sullivan County for day two of my fall break gym hunting extravaganza.
I've found that Sullivan County edges out Pike County slightly in the battle for which county has done the best job of preserving their old gyms. Graysville is one of them. I first heard about it when I read Kyle Neddenriep's Historic Hoosier Gyms a while back. Both the unique history of the place and the fact that it has one of the few intact old balcony sections you'll find really grabbed me. The gym is built on the back of the old Graysville High School (also still standing) which were both erected in 1927. The story goes that the old high school burned down, and the entire community rallied together to build the new one in the course of just a few months. They were determined that the students would have a proper place to go to school that year. My guide for the visit, and the man who probably knows more about the gym than anyone else, Mr. Mike Pierce, told me that the gym was finished in the late fall, so the students even went to school on some Saturdays to make up for lost time. That is a community of people who value education and the life lessons that come with it! The Graysville Greyhounds battled in the very competitive Sullivan sectional during most of their time in this gym, and brought home one illustrious title in 1929. Small schools like this that managed at least once sectional championship hold those memories close for decades upon decades. I would have loved to hear the story behind that team from someone who saw it. With each passing year, those stories from those generations get harder and harder to tell.
Historic Hoosier Gyms has the capacity here listed at 360. It definitely feels a little bigger than that. An intact balcony is going to win me over immediately any time I run across one. I talked about how rare and magical they are when I wrote the blog about the old Loogootee gym a few weeks back. The balcony here hangs right over the sidelines, and then even has a section along one baseline wall. There are three rows of permanent blue wooden bench seats all the way around. A sturdy metal fence keeps onlookers safe while providing a good if somewhat obstructed view of the action below. The seating is broken up along the baseline end into two small sections with a small wooden closet room of some sort in the middle. An old scoreboard and the basket itself hang against the wall of that room. Long rectangular windows line the upper sideline walls above the bleachers. I can only imagine what the environment must have been like when this gym was full and fans were crammed up into the balcony and stomping their feet and yelling down at the action below. I can't tell you how many times I've been told when visiting these old gyms, "This place was considered when Hoosiers was filmed!" Much of that is probably true, and much of it probably isn't, but I know for sure that this place absolutely would have captured the essence of the Golden Age of Hoosier Hysteria if they would have incorporated it into the film.
Underneath the balcony lies seating that largely mirrors what is above. There are three row of bleachers along each sideline, but there are none along the baseline. The original tall scorer's table is intact in the middle of one of these sections. The baseline wall where you enter the gym is pretty bare, but the opposite end features a very tall rectangular cutout where a stage used to stand. At one some point over the years the bottom was torn out and a wall was framed in. You can still see where the brickwork looks different as it would have framed in the stage when it was intact. Mr. Pierce told me that brick here is very unique. It is fire-glazed, which not only gives it a really cool look, but it's rare nowadays and would be almost impossible to authentically replace. The gym floor that was visible when I visited was actually the second layer, and I believe it was used when the school was an elementary. It sits above the original hardwood floor, but there was actually another layer on top of it that was used most recently until water damage struck a few months ago. Lastly, this doesn't have to do with the gym itself, but the exterior of this building is just gorgeous. Pictures don't do it justice.
The reason Engine One-Forty-Three and the sentiments in Johnny Cash's music were weighing on me so much on my way in, (other than the fact that I had listened to Johnny for 2+ hours in the car at that point) was that Graysville was my first stop on the day. This gym served the high school until the cold hand of consolidation plucked all the students and sent them to Sullivan starting in 1961. For the next 40 years the school and gym then were home to elementary students. When that school was closed in 2001, the future of the building was very much in question. Some community members then stepped in, along with Mr. Pierce and his wife, and came up with a creative idea to save the building and put it to good use. Through a lot of hard work and determination, they secured the necessary liscensing to open the first rural charter school in Indiana. This school carried on strong for another 20 years until COVID shut everything down. With remote learning not really being feasible in an area without a reliable internet connection, the school was forced to close its doors. With the future of the school in jeopardy once again, people stepped up once more, including Mr. Pierce (as the project manager) to ensure the building and its legacy lived on. This time though it's not going to be quite the same. Without a viable option to continue on as a school, the old school and gym are being turned into apartments. It's a way to preserve much of the character of the building and give it a purpose, even if it means losing part of the heart of what makes it special on the inside. I was able to check out the gym just a few weeks before it was going to really cease being a gym anymore. By the time you're reading this, it may already be sectioned into individual housing units. While yes, it's sad, I have a hard time blaming people when things like this happen, especially when all other options have been exhausted (which they definitely have been in this case), and the alternative is most likely demolition. At the same time, this is also why I connected with Johnny Cash during my visit. This place is looking on at the beauty of a life well lived (yes I'm personifying a gym), knowing the end is here, facing the mortality of it head on, and finding peace in the midst of it all.
