The fight over school funding in most states involves a long battle in the courts that may span several years and never have a definitive endpoint because resistance to adequate funding of public schools appears to be endemic to government processes. The "DeRolph" case, first filed by the plaintiffs in December 1991, is one such legal battle over school funding in Ohio and has proved to be no exception to the evolutionary scenario except that it has continued even longer and been characterized by greater animosity. Officially, on December 11, 2002, the Ohio Supreme Court declared for the fourth time ("DeRolph IV") that the school funding system is unconstitutional and in need of a complete systematic overhaul in order to comply with the "thorough and efficient" clause of the Ohio Constitution (article VI, section 2). However, the court did not retain jurisdiction in "DeRolph IV" and in May 2003 granted a writ of prohibition to the state that impeded any court in the state from pursuing the implementation of a remedy. A remedy in accordance with "DeRolph I" and "II" required that Ohio's public school children receive from the state an adequate education or one of high quality. In this article the author begins to chronicle the history of "DeRolph" from its initial filing in 1991, explaining the journey in the pursuit of adequacy and describing the background of the litigation, conditions, groups, and individuals inextricably linked to the initiation of "DeRolph" and the creation of the Coalition of Rural and Appalachian Schools (CORAS). The author will continue this chronicle in "The Journey to Adequacy: The "DeRolph" Saga. Part II," which appears in the Spring 2005 issue (Volume 30, Number 4) of the "Journal of Education Finance," see EJ720566. (Contains 91 footnotes.)