Mascot stuff of legends

You can't beat a bunny, or so the saying goes in Fisher.

While the high school's mascot might not seem as fear-inducing as other area schools', Fisher's beloved Bunnies have lots of lore.

Stories detailing the Bunnies' beginnings have a common root: the lucky rabbit's foot.

Boys wore the rabbits' feet on their belts for luck as they headed into basketball tournament play, said 93-year-old Henry Lammle, who graduated Fisher High in 1933. The nickname followed.

Leland J. Glazebrook, a 1939 grad, recorded the Bunnies' story in a book commemorating the first 100 years of Fisher High.

"Fisher always contended for the county championship," Glazebrook wrote. "(A freshman) wore the good luck charm and contributed his ability to it. Other kids copied him. Pat Harmon of The News-Gazette began to write about the Bunnies and the name stuck."

In 1991, a News-Gazette story cited the late Mary Lammle on the topic. Mrs. Lammle wrote Fisher's 1976 centennial history book.

Mrs. Lammle told the paper the nickname dates from a basketball tournament in Paxton during the 1933-34 season. Gene Meneeley, the rural mail carrier, was a joker. He told the boys to fasten the left hind leg of a graveyard rabbit to the buckle of their belts for luck. This was during the Depression, and lots of people ate rabbit. The team, with rabbits' feet bouncing at their sides, became the Bunnies.

The grade school teams go by a similarly mild-mannered representation: the Scotties.

Fisher schools began as Union District No. 2. Taxpayers voted to issue $600 in bonds for a frame building that opened in 1877, according to the high school's centennial book.

In 1914, the district put up the brick building that would, with several additions, house all students through the 12th grade. Today, a village park sits where that school was located on Third Street.

For a while, Fisher had separate grade and high school districts. In 1948, Community Unit District No. 1 was formed with a single school board. Around that time, a concrete block building was added to the corner of the school grounds for an agricultural shop and classroom. Now the school district uses it as a bus barn. The village owns it and the grounds.

In October 1964, the district dedicated a new high school off of U.S. 136. In 1984, seventh- and eighth-graders were moved to that building.

The district's newest building opened in 2003. It's a single-story, $8.3 million grade school. It took about 15 months to build and is adjacent to Fisher High School.

Today, Fisher's enrollment is 641. Susan Helle works as the district's bookkeeper. One of her children graduated from the high school, another is a senior there.

"It's a plus to be small," she said. "Kids can participate in whatever they want. There are no tryouts, no eliminations. The district has good teachers, too.

"It's kind of like Mayberry growing up here. Everybody looks after everybody else."