Laurel (800?) Built 1956
October 15, 2025
October 15, 2025
If you grew up like me as a PBS kid in the 90s, you're probably familiar with the children's show Arthur. It's about an aardvark who always seems to find himself in a pickle, but eventually learns a valuable life lesson by the end of the episode. I vividly remember one episode where Arthur and the gang learn a valuable lesson about reputations and making assumptions about people based on them. For whatever reason it stuck with me all these years. The idea of reputations and the way they can impact how people look at one another again came to mind during my trip into Franklin County in October. I was standing in the old Laurel gym talking to my host, Mr. Tracy Brumfiel, about the town. He is from Laurel and is now one of the primary caretakers of the old gym and school building. He was telling me how Laurel has a reputation in the surrounding area for being a little rough around the edges. That because the town isn't what it used to be, the people have maybe developed a hardened exterior. I wouldn't have thought so just from talking to Mr. Brumfiel, who was as hospitable as can be. I also wouldn't have known it from driving into the town. Laurel sits nestled in between some of the rolling hills of Franklin County. There are a lot of old historical buildings intermixed with more modern structures. Some of them are worse for wear, but it doesn't look that atypical from any of the other hundreds of small Indiana towns I've driven through over the last couple of years.
While the town didn't necessarily look that strange, there was a feeling that I had driving in that I couldn't quite shake. Maybe it was just a carry over from the emotions and thoughts I had running through my head when I visited Brookville an hour earlier (which I wrote about in that blog), or maybe it was the buildings standing from over 100 years ago that I passed on my way to the gym. Laurel has a presence to it. I've been reading a lot of Indiana historian Wendell Trogdon's books lately, and in Indiana Backroads he dedicates about 4 whole pages to Laurel, which he doesn't do for any other town in the book. In those pages he captures the essence of Laurel. He talks about its importance in the early days of our state's history when it was a major stop on the route of people traveling through this part of Indiana. The historical businesses, hotels, and taverns made it a really happening place. Then economic decline hit it hard, just like so many other places. What's odd is that some of the locals he talked to in the book say that for a time, Laurel gained a reputation for being "the meanest place in Indiana." This randomly affirms the reputation that Mr. Brumfield sort of described to me. Outside of Mr. Brumfield (who again, was nothing but gracious), I didn't meet enough people to be able to validate or disprove this reputation personally. To me Laurel feels like another small Indiana town with a rich history who has been knocked down repeatedly by the passage of time in a world that doesn't care what gets left behind in the name of progress. When things that are important to you and give you an identity continue to get taken away, you start to lose your sense of a self a bit. And yeah, maybe that gives you a bit of an edge. What I do know is that Laurel has taken a few hits, but it's still here. There are still people like Mr. Brumfield who care, and are doing what they can to make sure that Laurel has a future, while taking care of what is left of its past.
I'm not sure anything that I write in this blog today will do a better job of capturing the plight of the Laurel Panthers and their gym than what Gregg Doyel did a few years ago in the Indy Star. Gregg writes a couple of these pieces a year, and no one does it better. You can that read that HERE. Laurel lost its high school when Brookville did in 1989. Like I talked about in the Brookville blog, losing your school to consolidation in the 80s was very uncommon, and might have hurt even more because of that fact. While Brookville became home to the new high school, Laurel was just kind of left to the wayside, other than a newer elementary that was built on the opposite side of town (that may be in danger of closing itself soon). From what I can gather by talking to people from both communities, the relationship between Laurel and Brookville seems to be a bit strained, even after all these years of going to school together. Time heals many wounds, but it doesn't always make the hard memories go away. Since Laurel High School closed, the gym and surrounding classrooms have been used for a myriad of different purposes over the years. Currently the whole building is used as a community center, and Mr. Brumfield and others are doing their best to get creative to find ways to utilize the spaces inside the building to serve the community and generate some funds for upkeep that needs to be done. Beyond renting the gym and cafeteria for basketball games and events, there is currently a food pantry and potentially a health center coming in the future. It's not a huge school, but there is still plenty of space that can be utilized for services that are needed in the area. At the heart of it all though, is the old gym.
The Laurel Panthers began calling this gym home in 1956. While they weren't able to capture that elusive sectional title, they did nab a couple of Whitewater Valley Conference titles to go along with some other great teams. One of my favorite pieces of memorabilia out in the hallway is a picture of the 1974 team who scored 113 points against Moores Hill and averaged 81 points on the year. As someone who played on a Norman Dale style offense in high school, I can only imagine how much fun that team must have been to play on and watch. This gym would have been a fitting home for that excitement. The interior of the gym actually looks more like a WPA style gym from the 30s, which only adds to the charm. There are 7 rows of permanent wooden bleachers along each sideline. The bottoms and sides of the bleachers are grey, while the bench seats are painted red. The bench seats sit on little risers which give them a really cool look. A thick red stripe travels across the wall right on top of the bleachers and along the bottom of the baseline walls. Big square windows line the upper sideline walls and thankfully can still let in a lot of natural light when uncovered. A neat old school scoreboard hangs up here as well along with some banners honoring a local club boys basketball team that uses the gym. In one corner of the gym by the main entrance is a little crow's nest that sits above a small closet that has been built out. On the opposite side from that corner is a little cutout in the corner of the bleachers that provides more space in front of one of the doors.
You know I love an old mural, and boy does this gym deliver in that department. A lanky cartoonish panther prowls menacingly above the sideline bleachers on one side. Another one dribbles a basketball while wearing a Laurel Panther uniform on one side of the stage. The other side of the stage features "Panthers" written in pretty red script with paw prints above and below it. Elsewhere there is a simple but terrifying red panther face growling at whoever may be looking at it. All of them are unique, all of them in different styles. They bring so much character and life to the place. Speaking of the stage, it sits on the far baseline end and is a beauty. It's trimmed on three sides by gorgeous dark brown brick. There are little red squares in the upper corners. Red ribboning runs across the top with a cursive black "L" in the middle. It's all fantastic. The playing floor is a little more modern with a two-toned court and big red "L" in the center. The hardwood is mostly a light-gold with darker brown hues inside the three-point lines. "Panthers" is written in black right inside the foul lines. I haven't even mentioned the incredible scorer's table, the old Whitewater Valley Conference championship banner, the cool little random sign underneath one window, or the memorabilia in the hallway. It's all Laurel Panther pride, everywhere.
I could write some more here about how unnecessary and damaging it was to consolidate two schools like Brookville and Laurel as late as they did in the 80s, but I already covered that in the other blog. I could write about how when a place like Laurel loses their high school, they start to lose the soul of the town, or how preserving old gyms like this save a part of a town's soul that can't be regained once they're gone, but I've covered all that at nauseum in other blogs as well. What I do want to reiterate is how we should listen to the lesson that Arthur tried to teach my generation 30 years ago. We shouldn't judge people, or a whole town, on misguided and antiquated reputations. What Wendell Trogdon found in the mid-90s, and Gregg Doyle a decade ago, and myself just a few months ago, is a town with many people who are trying to find a way forward. People like Mr. Brumfield who are actively seeking ways to bring services to their community that will improve the quality of life for its residents, all while keeping the memory alive of a place that meant so much to so many people. I really enjoyed talking to Mr. Brumfield because he clearly values a lot of the same things I do. I'm sure there are plenty of people in Laurel who share these values as well. If enough of them keep stepping up, I think the town and this gym will be in good hands for a long time.
