Gym made from the concrete of a dam and with the money collected from the sale of bottles

According to CJ Sibiu, in the 1970s, over 500 children studied at the school in Gura Râului, and physical education classes were held in the open air or, when it rained, in a classroom. Ioan Mateş, director of the school at that time, proposed to the teachers and parents a bold plan: to build, by his own efforts, a gym for the students.

The money was to be collected from the sale of rose hips, hawthorn, doves, bottles and empty jars, during the mandatory practice weeks of the pioneer detachments in the school. In addition, each family with children in the village school had to contribute 80 lei each.

“More than 25 thousand lei were collected from the money of the pioneers and from the parents’ contributions. He also appealed to the City Hall, which didn’t really have funds because at that time the drinking water network was being introduced in the village”, says the school cashier at the time, mathematics teacher Petru Jurca, currently retired.

He adds that the physical work was done by the students from the 7th and 8th grades, by their teachers, but also by the parents: “During the physical education classes, the students dug at the foundation, together with the teachers. In the school workshop, I tied the concrete steel for the posts and beams. My father was a blacksmith and I was not afraid of hard work. A team of Saxons from Cristian took care of the masonry, which was paid with the money from the pioneers”.

An unexpected help arrived from the dam builders: “We were lucky, as they offered to help us with trucks to transport the sand and gave us all the cement needed for the foundation, belt and beams. They were good-hearted people, and the villagers would stop the trucks and give the drivers a bottle of brandy”, the teacher remembers.

Thus, the wall rows of the gym are made of special bolts. “The people at the dam asked us if we wanted some concrete bolts, that they have several hundred. In fact, there were some samples of the concrete they were pouring at the crowning, which had the shape of cubes with a side of 25 centimeters. Therefore, it is exactly the same concrete that was used to build the dam”, adds the teacher.

In just one year, the gym was built. The brick, tiles and roof wood were paid, in the end, by the town hall, and the work done by students, teachers and parents.

“When I drew the line, I saw that there were 10 thousand lei left. They all entered the school fund”, says the mathematics teacher, the one who would become the school’s director for many years.

“In 2013, he retired and, currently, his daughter, Anca, is at the helm of the school. The students from the commune study in two buildings, one being renovated, the other already being modernized from the funds allocated by the Gura Raului City Hall. It is a smart school, with bright classrooms, where students have given up notebooks in favor of laptops, and chalk has disappeared because it is not useful on the interactive whiteboards installed in every classroom. In the gym, children play football, basketball and volleyball, or do exercises on the nine trellises lined up on one of the walls. The floor is new, as is the lighting system, works are being handled by Anca Botoroaga, the daughter of the one who managed the money for the construction”, reports CJ Sibiu.

Since its opening in 1978, more than 4,000 children have played sports in the gym, which is the size of a volleyball court.

CJ Sibiu shows that the reservoir at Gura Râului was put into operation in 1979, it stores 15.5 million cubic meters of water and ensures the supply of the municipality of Sibiu, the town of Ocna Sibiului and numerous localities in their vicinity.