Third-grade students go Underground

by Melissa Wilson

SBJ Staff

For the eighth year, 80 Springfield businesses are working with 96 teachers from Springfield Public Schools, Greenwood, Springfield Lutheran, New Covenant Academy and Springfield Catholic Schools to introduce third-grade students to the world of business.

The Third-Grade Students Go To Work program began Feb. 11 with Westport Elementary at KGBX, 840-B S. Glenstone, and will end March 12 with Twain Elementary at Southwestern Bell, 600 St. Louis.

These interactive, 3 1/2-hour tours of business sites are designed to be a learning opportunity for the students, to see how economic concepts are applied in the world of work, and a chance for adults to drive home the understanding that individual employees are the keys to success for a business, according to a Springfield Public Schools press release.

Led by Tom Langston, Springfield Underground vice president of warehousing, 47 Walt Disney Elementary third-graders toured Springfield Underground, 2100 N. LeCompte Road, Feb. 17.

"It's a good experience for the kids to be able to go out into the work force. The thing I like about Springfield Underground being part of this program is that there's so many different applications the kids can learn from us, plus they get the visual effect of our unique development," Langston said.

The students were shown the various levels of storage available in the underground complex, including a 30-degree Fahrenheit cold storage room and an area leased by Kraft Foods to store 75 million pounds of fermenting cheese in 500-pound steel drums.

Disney teacher Loretta Trower was impressed with the amount of underground space at Springfield Underground.

"I'm in awe of the largeness and magnitude ... and to think what it took and the amount of mining to clear out all this space," Trower said.

As they wandered through the 55-degree, 45-degree and 36-degree rooms filled with cheese, the third-graders were full of questions for Langston, such as if mice had found their way to the cheese and if there were bats in the mining caverns.

"I've been here 11 years, and I've only seen two bats. When we had our offices in the Underground, I reached in my trash can one day and felt something ... a bat. Other than that one, there was one on a pillar one time," Langston said.

As for the mice, Langston told the students there are none living in the Underground because the trucks are inspected thoroughly before they're unloaded for signs of rodents.

"We won't get into that, but we have ways of telling if there have been mice on the trailers. If we do get a mouse down here, we use these little catch-alls in the warehouse; we don't use any live bait or poison because of all the food products," he said.

Springfield Underground was begun as a limestone mining operation in the '40s by Joe Griesemer, a Billings farmer who recognized the need for lime as highway construction began across the country.

In 1960, the Griesemer family began converting the caverns made by the underground mining into temperature-controlled storage space. The Underground now covers 2 million square feet 80 to 100 feet below the surface in northeast Springfield and continues to grow. Louis Griesemer, Joe's son, and John F. Griesemer, his grandson, are the president and vice president of the company.

Among the students' favorite parts of the Springfield Underground tour were the 30-degree freezer, the cheese and, of course, the pizza served for lunch.

[[In-content Ad]]