THE BOLINS: A LEGACY OF COMMUNITY SUPPORT

By David Hicks, Chief Communications Officer

TAKE A WALK BY BOLIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL and you’ll likely hear the traditional buzz of a schoolhouse: cars making their way through the carpool lane, bells signaling the start of the school day, and children having fun on the playground. These sounds have created the auditory background of the neighborhood since the school opened in 2000. Prior to the campus’s existence, however, you were more likely to hear pigs, cows, sheep, and plenty of farm equipment from the fertile land of the Bolin farm.

Luther and Anna Mae Bolin are the namesakes of Bolin Elementary School, and their family’s history in Allen is just as rich as the farmland soil where the school currently sits.

Luther Bolin was born in 1904 and graduated from Lewisville ISD before moving to Allen. Anna Mae was born in 1911, graduated from Allen High School, and married Luther in the spring of 1930. When Luther and Anna Mae married, they settled on a farm south of McDermott near where Ereckson Middle School is now located until 1947 when they bought a farm East of Allen Heights and south of Bethany where Bolin Elementary School is now located. Even today, 40 acres are still home to their grandsons, Bobby and Benny.

Luther and Anna Mae passed away in 1983 and 1990, respectively, and never had a chance to see the school that was named in their honor. Their grandson Benny Bolin, a former

Allen ISD School Board Trustee and current Allen High School nurse, has a feeling how his grandparents would have reacted to being the namesakes of an elementary school.

“If my grandparents could see Bolin Elementary today, my grandmother would probably just be silent, because, well, she was the silent type. But I know that my grandfather would be happy and honored beyond belief. I think they would both be glad that their land was being used to educate children.”

So how did Bolin Elementary come to be? In the late 1980s, Allen ISD Director of Operations, Bobby Curtis, approached Kenneth Bolin, the son of Luther and Anna Mae and father to Benny. Bobby asked Kenneth if he would be interested in selling some of his family’s farmland to the school district to build a new school. Kenneth declined the offer because he didn’t believe Allen would reach a population that required another school. Ten years later, Kenneth and his brother Forrest came back to Allen ISD with a new proposal: they wanted to donate a portion of the Bolin family land to build a new school and support the educational needs of Allen’s children. All that the brothers asked for in return was that the school be named in their parents’ honor.

The Bolin name is near synonymous with community support in Allen. Well before Benny served on the Board of Trustees, his grandfather Luther also volunteered on the School Board. It was also a common occurrence for Luther to take extra crops from his farm and share them with families in the city. Both of Benny’s parents are Allen High School graduates. His mother, Jo, was valedictorian in 1949, and his father, Kenneth, was a founding member of the Allen Band Booster Association. Their grandsons Bobby and Benny and granddaughter-in-law Betty also graduated from AHS as did their children Jerad, Erica, and Brandon.

“If my grandparents could see Bolin Elementary today, my grandmother would probably just be silent, because, well, she was the silent type. But I know that my grandfather would be happy and honored beyond belief. I think they would both be glad that their land was being used to educate children.”

“There have been five generations of Bolins in Allen ISD schools, and we’ve all just wanted to see this community and school district succeed,” Benny explains. “Knowing that our family’s legacy has had a part in this community’s history is special, and it’s great to see the staff at Bolin Elementary support those students every day.”