Dyllis Elementary School

Dyllis Elementary School is located in the Dyllis community at the east end of Roane County. Not always known as Dyllis, the community was formerly called Mays Valley. The first school, called Mays School, was established in 1871 and was a one-room log building. It was located a few yards east of the present building, to the rear of the former E. L. Rose Store. The first church in the Dyllis area was Prospect Baptist Church, which met in Mays School. The church and school were the focal point of the community and its people during the early years. The name was changed to Dyllis during the time Claude Hendricks was mayor of Harriman. He was also the Superintendent of the L&N Railroad Company. He named an area railroad station after each of his four daughters. Dyllis was named after his daughter Dyllis Hendricks. The Dyllis Railroad Depot was built in 1910 and was located near the present Dyllis Baptist Church. The railroad's major freight leaving the Dyllis Depot was peaches, grown in surrounding orchards. Iron ore was also mined in the area and shipped out from the depot. Several homes in the Dyllis community were built for the railroad workers. Some of these homes are still standing and lived in today. The second school building was a three-room structure built in 1925. It was in this school that Dora Ladd (Baker) taught after graduating from Roane County Central High School in Kingston. She later went to law school at the University of Tennessee. There she met and eventually married Howard H. Baker. Her first child was Tennessee's former senator, Howard Baker, Jr. In 1948, the three-room Dyllis School was dismantled and replaced with the present brick building. The gymnasium was added the following year in 1949. Over the years the community grew. A new and larger lunchroom and one classroom were added onto the east end of the school in 1964. As the enrollment continued to grow, a library and two more classrooms were added in 1974. In 1981 a solution to the continuing, overcrowding problem was to transfer the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades to Oliver Springs Elementary. This left Dyllis Elementary as a kindergarten through fifth grade school. The last addition, six new classrooms on the east end of the building, was completed in 1996. Two classrooms in the older part of the building were renovated to make a new office and teacher workroom area. At the end of 1996, the total classrooms numbered sixteen. Dyllis Elementary has not only grown in size, but has been a frontrunner in the technology age. It was one of the first schools in Roane County and in the East Tennessee area to be connected on the internet. It was the first school in Roane County to establish a local area network, having all classrooms connected with a file server. We Can't Hide That Dyllis Pride!