Tony Tye, Post-Gazette
	Chatham Elementary School alumnae Carol Martin Limmer, left, and Kathy Mayo Schoeller examine the locker they used to share during a tour of the school, yesterday. The North Side school is among 22 the Pittsburgh district closed this week. Readers' Forum Pittsburgh school memories

Memories of air-raid drills, snowball fights and brushes with authority came rushing back yesterday for about 10 gracefully aged alumnae who gathered for a final visit to Chatham Elementary School.

"This cabinet was where all the white paste was kept," Barb Boniker, 56, of Summer Hill, said in one classroom -- then recalled the name of a boy who liked to eat the stuff.

Superintendent Mark Roosevelt closed Chatham, on the North Side, and 21 other city schools Wednesday, in a restructuring designed to save money and boost academic achievement. While Mr. Roosevelt is focusing squarely on the future, others -- alumni, pupils and faculty -- took time this week to savor the past.

"This is where we took our class pictures, right here," Kathy Mayo Schoeller, 56, said on the steps outside the school.

Click. One more photo for old times' sake.

As they made their way through the 83-year-old building, they marveled at how times had changed, and how they had, too.

"If I hadn't smoked all those years ... ," Carole Rohm Partridge, 71, of the North Side said, as she struggled up the stairs to the second floor, a portable oxygen supply keeping her going.

Some of the ladies -- Mrs. Partridge brought her worn identification card -- recalled their days as members of the student safety patrol. They enforced the no-running rule at the Perry North school and stood guard at the water fountains to keep unruly peers from flicking water around.

"Flicking water," Mrs. Partridge repeated, in a nod to the bigger problems city schools have these days.

Because of three years of low test scores across the district, Mr. Roosevelt has cited an urgent need for an academic turnaround. Besides closing under-used and low-performing schools, district officials are opening eight schools called accelerated learning academies, expanding 10 elementary schools to take in middle-grade pupils and bringing a new curriculum to the district.

Chatham, a low-performing school by district standards, will send its 185 pupils to the Northview Accelerated Learning Academy. When Ms. Boniker learned about the plan to close Chatham, she called Principal Anita Walker and arranged the farewell tour for a group of lifelong friends.

Ms. Boniker said she wanted to see the place before it's "turned into who knows what, or leveled." The financially strapped district hasn't announced plans for Chatham, but it plans to sell as many surplus buildings as possible.

Not all is lost, however. Trophies, plaques and other memorabilia from the schools will be saved, though district officials weren't immediately able to say what they planned to do with the items.

Ms. Boniker and her friends giggled, teased and screeched the way they must have done when they trod the halls in the 1930s, '40s, '50s and '60s.

The gymnasium seemed smaller than before. The greenhouse had been turned into a storage room. A small building stood on part of the playground.

The school-- imposing brick exterior, solid wooden doors and trim within -- seemed more beautiful than before. The memories, etched at an impressionable age, had not dimmed with time.

Ann Stover Mohn, 56, of Ross, said she was among the pupils who received polio vaccines at the school from Dr. Jonas Salk himself. She recalled her mother saying, "That man will be famous some day."

Ms. Boniker pointed out the classrooms where she watched John Glenn orbit the earth and cheered for the Pirates during the 1960 World Series.

"This was Miss Davies'," she said outside another room. "She picked me out of the chair and shook me for talking to Greg Gloor."

The women recalled the air-raid drills of World War II and the Cold War. They recalled boys throwing snowballs and pitching cards on the playground. They remembered one cute boy, particularly.

"I loved it here," said Ms. Schoeller, who traveled from North Carolina for the event. Her mother, Jeanne Stewart Mayo, of Swissvale, and sister, Janet Mayo Brogan, 55, of Ross, also attended the school and took part yesterday. The group paused in the auditorium to point out the place where Ms. Brogan, battling heat exhaustion, collapsed during her promotion ceremony.

Ms. Schoeller said pupils in her day marked the end of the school year by running down the hall, screaming with joy. Ms. Walker said youngsters were more somber on Chatham's last day Wednesday.

"They hugged everybody," she said.