WOODBURY, Tenn. (WTVF) — When a couple from California bought a former school building in Cannon County and turned it into their home, some in the small community had questions about what might come next.
Mike and Lisa Stolt had an answer: it would remain a gathering place, just as it had been for decades prior.
The couple hosted hundreds of neighbors at Short Mountain School on the Saturday before Halloween, filling the gym, bounce house and all, with games, candy and the kind of gathering the building was always meant to hold.
"The gym is essentially the same but we do have a bounce house inside," Lisa said. "Games, we have candy."
For the Stolts, buying a school in a small community came with a responsibility they embraced from the start.
"We came here knowing it's a school," Mike said when we met him in June. "It's gotta be a public gathering place."
Outside, parents watched their kids play in the same spots where some of them once waited to be picked up from school. The building has a new purpose, but some of the traditions never changed.
"There's a lot of people that are just riding down the street that we haven't even met," Mike said. "So if they get a chance to come out and see us, we get to meet them for the first time? That's what, three years? So it's kinda cool."
The festival drew neighbors old and new, including seven-year-old Jennifer, who was more than willing to tell me all about how much fun she had.
"The balloon dogs! And the candy!"
For the Stolts, the festival is one way of honoring their desire to keep this building in the community.
"A gathering place," Mike said. "The school would always have like fundraisers or runs or walks and things of that nature and we wanted to continue that."
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