On Sunday, Becky’s Drive-In will be showing “School Days in Lehigh Township” at 7:15 p.m. on the big screen. The gates open at 6 p.m.

Donations will be taken at the gates to benefit the Lehigh Township Historical Society for the upkeep of the Indianland one-room schoolhouse. The theater’s concession stands will be serving hot food and snacks.

The black and white silent movie was taken in 1946 by William “Becky” Beck. The color sound movie was taken in 1956 of the “New” Lehigh Township Elementary School.

The movie will be narrated by former students and teachers at the schools they attended or taught.

Becky traveled around the township filming the different student activities happening in the schoolhouses in the area. His friend, Bobby Spangler, who was on the school board in Lehigh Township at the time, helped to organize the filming as well. The narration was done in the 1990s and saved on a CD to use for the film.

The film includes 16 different school buildings, teachers with students learning new things, singing, writing problems on the blackboard, playing games, sports, daily exercises, a potbelly stove, a 48-star American flag, recess in the snow, students pumping water outside, Joe Gasper the milkman, construction of the “new” school, the principal Miss Tessie Oplinger and more.

“Back in the 1990s, my family had the two films transferred onto VHS tapes to sell to the public,” Cindy Deppe, one of the owners, said.

“One thing that was missing was the original black and white film of the one-room and double-room schoolhouses that were filmed in 1946. Becky had donated the black and white film to the Lehigh Township Elementary School, and it was misplaced back in the early 1990s during some of the renovations being made to the school back then.

“Luckily, I had taken movies using a camcorder while the film was being shown on a movie screen to Principal Mr. Edwin Corle at a PTA meeting back in the late 1980s. I wanted to make a copy for Mr. Corle because he loved it so. Since then, the movie reel was misplaced.

To sell VHS tapes to the public, the video of the film taken at the PTA meeting was used to make VHS copies for the public, because that was the only thing I had of the original film. It wasn’t the clearest, but still, something to show for it.”

Before the old Lehigh Elementary School was torn down in 2021, Deppe contacted the school’s secretary, Angie Eaton, and explained to her about the film being misplaced and if there were any possibilities of finding the film before the school was torn down.

Eaton asked the custodian, Richard Smith, if he had seen the film while going through things to be transported to the new school. He was able to find the film in the basement of the old school.

“Since then, my husband and I traveled to Texas to have the two reels of film digitized in order to show the movies to the public on the big movie screen at the drive-in. Because of the one reel being lost for all those years, I wasn’t going to take the chance to lose it again by shipping it to Texas, so we decided to take a plane and personally hand deliver the films to the professionals to be digitized.”

Back in the 1990s, when getting the video of the silent black and white film of the schoolhouses transferred to VHS, Deppe recorded some of the former students and teachers at the different schools and had them narrate what was being shown of the school they attended.

“My husband, Dean, and son, Chris, worked on synchronizing the narration with each school filmed back in 1946 and portions of 1956. Most of the former students and all the teachers that narrated the film have since passed away, but we still have their voices to be heard at the showing on Sept. 24, on what would have been my dad’s 114th birthday,” Deppe said.