Bowlegs High School - Yahnseh Yearbook (Bowlegs, OK)

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poured into the new oil field. From the Missis- sippi westward the Seminole-Bowlegs Oil Field became the mecca of the fortune hunter and the job seeker. Young Harvard engineers represent- ing great oil companies, rubbed elbows with gamblers and dance-hall girls, representing the evil that accompanies oil discoveries. Roads around Bowlegs were in rainy weather not roads but quagmires. A trip to Seminole or Wewoka by car or truck was a matter of half a day. From ten to twenty mules were required to transport oil field machinery and equipment. Hastily built Wooden shanties housed fam- ilies and stores and business enterprizes. For- tunes were made and lost in a day. Bowlegs of that day might have been likened to a Franken- stein. It was a creature, created by oil and grown beyond all bounds. Then came the school and the churches with their cultural influence. That surging sea of humanity continued to ebb and flow, but the riff-raff went out with the tide. Only the deep- calm ocean of a substantial citizenry remained. And this was the true foundation of U. G. No. 5. On May 24, 1927, a special election was held, a Union Graded school decided upon, and the name of Bowlegs appended thereunto. H. Emerson was elected superintendent and charg- ed with the task of building a high school. This he has done so nobly and so well that the creature of his building stands as a noble monu- ment to the faith, foresight, and ability of its founder. Oil furnished the money, but an able Superintendent backed by a loyal Board of Edu- cation, furnished the motivating force. Twenty-seven sections of land made up the new school district. Within this area all the major oil companies had camps, peopled by the workers and their families. Many gasoline plants were located in the district, the largest of which was Sinclair Plant 13, at that time the largest gasoline plant in the world. There were hundreds and hundreds of children for whom educational opportunity had to be provided. After bonds were voted in July, 1927, for the construction of a high school, the oil companies in the district assisted in making a survey to determine the centers of school population. The site selected for the three-room frame structure that housed the first high school was the loca- tion of the principal's home today, and that duplex teacherage has been constructed from the original high school building. Three wing schools were added before school opened on September 19, Taylor, Allen, Thrace, Treadaway, and Rascoe. It was necessary for patrons and business men to contribute funds for the structures of the first grade school at Bowlegs. New buildings were erected and additional faculty members added rapidly during the next few years, but the enrollment increased even faster. In those early days of U. G. No. 5, classes were held in teacherages and one semes- ter the fifth and sixth grades met in the super- intendents garage. Seating facilities were in- adequate and teachers often had a hundred or more students in one room. During the school year of 1928-29, the present brick high school and the gymnasium were built and the Wilson and Walker wing schools added. But enrollment increased, addi- tional equipment was added, the faculty was enlarged, and many customs and precedents es- tablished. By 1930, Bowlegs had become known as the largest Union Graded school in existence with an assessed valuation of nearly five million dollars. Enrollment had passed the 2,000 mark. A teaching staff of 38 instructors offered work including a full four year high school course with 26 units accredited by the State Depart- ment of Education. Four school buses trans- ported the students above the sixth grade to the central plant. There were seven wing schools at one time: ITIO Camp Page Seven

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C H A P T E R I - BOWLEGS, VERY EARLY - The initial chapter in the saga of U. G. No. 5 must read substantially like the open pages of any treatise on Oklahoma history. From the morning of time these wind-swept prairies were the hunting grounds of the Indianfof the Bowlegs and the other Plains tribes. Then, as a rapidly moving panorama came the Seminoles and the other Five Tribes from the South, the cattlemen, the railroads, the settlers4and Okla- homa was the forty-sixth state. Two integral units of the white man's re- gime were the farm and the school. Seminole County was a region of small farms and a con- tented rural populace. It was a region of the so-called cotton schools -one and two-room systems which declared a vacation during the harvest season. Two of these typically rural schools were Allen, District 24, and Thrace, District 26. Both were splendid two-teacher organizations offering work through the eighth grade, A limited num- ber of sports and extra-curricular activities were fostered. But students desiring high school training had to go away to nearby towns-- Seminole, Wewoka, and Ada. Allen and Thrace were entirely separate educational units in the early 1920's. But even then, Fate was uniting their destinies with a vision of greater things to come. Mr. and Mrs. Ernest L. Kiker were the last to guide the sixty students of Thrace. Allen, too, was about to dis- appear as a separate entity. In 1926 the Board of Education of the Allen District was composed of three unusually pro- gressive and far-seeing individuals: J. D. Ma- gruder, President, W. O. Townsend, Clerk, and J. O. Bradley, Member. Visualizing a high school where none then existed, these men set about making their dream a reality. The preliminary step was the election of Mr. and Mrs. H. S. Emerson, then teaching in Pontotoc County, to the positions of teachers in the Allen School. Emerson and the Board then began formulating plans for a rural high school to educate the boys and girls of an es- sentially rural community. And thus the story might have ended- ended with an average country high school, un- known and unsung. Thus the story of Bowlegs U. G. No. 5 might have ended before it was begun. But two factors made such mediocre end- ing impossible. First, was a gift of Nature, a gift so rich and abundant that the giving amounted to a veritable cataclysm, a gift which metamophised a rural countryside into a color- ful industrial center. The second factor was a man of dynamic energy and high ideals who builded a great in- stitution for the future. C H A P T E R II - DISCOVERY - A drowsy rural countryside was the present .Gite of Bowlegs in the summer of 1926. Farmers worked until Saturday noon, then took the fam- ily to town for a week's supplies and an ex- change of local gossip. On the dusty street corners men stood in sweltering little groups and speculated on the possible crop yield in the fall and made jocular references to how rich they were going to be when that wildcat test being drilled southwest of Wewoka became an oil well. That wildcat test became the Seminole Area Discovery Well! And overnight Bowlegs became a synomyn for all that was crude and lawless, all that was activity and Wealth and waste in a typical boom town. Thousands Hauling Timber to New Location Page Six

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Allen, Thrace, Walker, Treadaway, Rascoe, Tay- lor, and Wilson. Later, the Thrace unit was dis- continued and the building moved to Bowlegs, where the teacherage became the janitor's home. The brick high school building and the gymnasium were formally dedicated on January 11, 1929. The present Central Grade building was completed during the fall of the same year. During the construction of these edifices, classes were moved into each room as soon as it was completed. Teachers talked to the accompani- ment of hammers and saws and the voices ot workmen. When school opened in the fall of 1930, high school students were offered a schedule in- cluding music, language, mathematics, history, physical education, science, home economics, band, manual training, and commerce. All Work in both Junior and Senior High School was de-- partmental, with splendid equipment and teach- ers with standard college degrees in each de- partment. Under the supervision of Mrs. Elizabeth Emerson, the home making department had been organized two years earlier. At the same time classes in physical and biological science, taught by Mrs. Phyllis Draper Newport, were added to the curriculum. A year later, Miss Beryl Simpson joined the faculty as head of the new commercial depart- ment. At this time the Bison News, mimeograph- ed school paper, edited and published by the students made its first debut. The original staff of this periodical included: Editor, Floyd Lans- ford, Assistant Editor, Lola Montgomeryg Sports, William Robinson, Advertising, Ted Bath: Jokes, Thomas Mayhueg and cartoonist, Ruth Drake. In the fall of 1930 Industrial Arts was offer- ed for the first time in Junior and Senior high school. This work carried on in an annex to the gymnasium in order not to disturb other classes, was under the instruction of Clifton Parker, now a member of the faculty at Tonkawa Junior College. In this original annex, which now houses one room of the seventh grade, boys learned to make articles of furniture and to make repairs on the school equipment. Three annual football queens had been se-- lected: Winifred Diverse, '28, Helen Tennison, '29, and Lola Montgomery, '30, Outstanding football players remembered by fans of those early days were Maurice Lawson, Erdie Lans- ford, Francis Chapman, Floyd Lansford, and others. The Roustabouts, girls' pep squad, was sponsored by Miss Geneva Colley. Bowlegs' first graduating class received their diplomas in the spring of 1928. Personnel of this class included: Frances Faye Fortner. Valedictorian, and Gladys Bacon, Salutatoriang Gladys Gosnell, Lucille Lawson, Pauline Mc- Intyre, Troy Nicholson, Ray Nowlin, Sadie Sesher, Dovie Lee Summers. Another custom, instituted with the first graduating class, was the annual junior-senior banquet. Successive themes carried out in these gala affairs were: spring festival, Dutch, Japanese, flower garden and May day fetes. Students of U. G. No. 5 have always won honors in literary and musical contests. In the first year of its existence, Bowlegs high school carried off honors in a literary event held in the only available place in Bowlegs-a dance hall. In 1930 Thomas Mayhue won first place in Chemistry in the East Central Inter-scholas- tic meet, and several other students won awards. Miss Ruth Fraser directed the first operetta, Polished Pebbles, a junior high affair of 1929 Next year the first high school operetta, 'tGypsy Rover, was given. Plays and dramatic produc- tions date back to Adam and Eva, staged by the Junior Class of '29, and So This Is London, staged by the Senior Class of '30, Musical opportunities now included both junior and senior high chorus work, glee club. quartet, and both advanced and beginning band work. This department was provided with a new music room, annexed to the gym, during 1930. Even in these early days assemblies were under the complete direction of students, with Sinclair Plant 13 Page Eight