Fairmont High School - Maple Leaves Yearbook (Fairmont, WV)

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QUT, or T1-1EgHAzY PAST - - TO, THE GLORIOUS FUTURE i , 3 1 il 1 The Future Fairmont High School people of Fairmont have invested a million dollars in a school as their contribution to the modern notion that life holds no greater thing than the joy of living. Today it is a pleasure as well as an honor to be enrolled in Fairmont High School. In my day it was neither a pleasure nor an honor. At least it wasn't for me. In the last three years more students have worked their way from timid fresh' men to dignified seniors and received their cherished diplomas than in all the years put together from 1877 until 1912. I mention 1912 because in that year came the renaissance in the local field of education. The crying need for a high school building for Fairmont had been met seven years before by a bond issue, but the real public response to the possibilities of high school education did not begin to make itself manifest until about 1912. That period marked the coming into the school of manual training and domestic science, and with them came the emancipation of the boy and girl from the drudgery of unvarying book study. With the plying of needles and the pound' ing of the hammer came an appreciation of the need of physical education and really marked the turning point from public prejudice to public approbation of high school sports. It was not -until some years later, however, that the school authorities were able to provide the high school with an adequate gymnasium and playing Held. The growth of Fairmont High School has not all been physical growth. Its horizons have been broadened and its scholastic bounds widened. The average high school Nine ,Rear View' Fairmont High School' i

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,OF THE gl-IAZY PAST -- 5- TO ,THE GLORIOUS FUTURE cious attempt, but the boys urged me on with such words of encouragement as Go on, we'll back you up, and What business they got anyway telling a man he can't smoke? The first obstacle I had to cross was Professor Mercer, and I do believe that unless timely reinforcements arrived, I would have carried the day. I always had a way with Professor Mercer, and I'll always believe I had him sold on my right to smoke where I pleased, when Uncle Joe Rosier and Professor Humphreys hove into sight. Well, when my father fixed that up and arranged for my reinstatement, it was one of the express understandings that the school, as theretofore, would continue to make the rules. I have always been susceptible to feminine influence, and at 17, especially, I could be inspired to truly great deeds of valor by the smile and encouragement of the girl I loved. And, I might say, the reason Justice of the Peace Thomas W. Powell and I did not fight our scheduled duel for the hand of Miss Rose Vance, of the class of 1903, was the result of no weakening on the part of either of us, our mothers merely permitting us to oversleep. Another duel I was going to fight and didn't was over the hand of Miss Anna Braden. I challenged Dana Meredith, but nothing came of it, probably for the same reason. But for at least as long as I remained in High School, chivalry in the true sense had not entirely died out of the world, because the events preceding my second forced departure from the school can be traced to a whispered dare from the rosy lips of a maiden I admired. In one of the cubbyfhole rooms of the old school, illy ventilated, a man teacher had our class upon the rack, forcing us with exquisite torture to decline certain Lati-1 verbs.. One thing led to another. Words were passed. The situation was tense. Suddenly the maiden by our side whispered in my ear. Give him a whipping. I didn't exactly do that. The iight was declared to be a draw, like the Battle of Antietam, the teacher, like McClellan, holding the field, and I, like a bee, depart' ing quickly, and none too silently The events of the immediate future were somewhat hazy. There were confer' ences and consultations, and I was finally reinstated. To all outer aspects, there was a complete reconciliation, but deep in my heart I cherished the notion that the school didn't amount to much. And with the passing of years, that belief never diminished. This is why I have such a keen sense of appreciation for the new high school and what it promises for the future. It is everything my high school was not. For me and most of my associates the school was a prison which tended to enslave rather than to improve the youthful mind. , I This, you may be sure, was through no fault of the faculty and school authorities. There was yet to be an awakening of the people to the great experiment of public education. When I started to the high school, peof ple were still obsessed with the old notion that for each one of us life held a special purpose. We had not yet learned that ' . the best purpose of life is to live. The RMT View New F- H- S- Eight

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M OUT OF THE HAZY PAST - - TO THE GLORIOUS FUTURE graduate of today has a better education than the average college graduate of 50 years ago when the Fairmont High School was first established. And today's aver' age graduate needs no stepping stone between the high school and the college. I served 12 years on the board of education of Fairmont Independent District. During that time, the chief complaint I heard from parents was that the High School did not prepare the student for college and that at least one year's preparatory school work was necessary before the high school graduates could enter college. I am not sure this was true, but I do know that many high school graduates headed for college did not stop for a year or two of preparatory work. But if this condition did exist it has been corrected. As a member of the school board I was bitterly opposed to what I considered the waste of time of attending the preparatory school when the high school should be suflicient in itself, and I noticed with much satis' faction that when my own daughter left the high school with her diploma her credits were sufficient for entrance in a college where the requirements are rather strict The real history of the Fairmont High School from its first foundation in the years of Reconstruction following the Civil War to what I term the modern era beginning about 1912, will probably never be written, because there was no history to write. Its graduates were few and far between and in no sense were their num' bers comparable to the population the school had to draw from. Many young men were sent away to escape the tedium of its years, and the young women were forced to endure it, because, after all, for many of them it was that or nothing. . To have a history an institution must have a past in which its achievements stand out as so many white mile posts on the road to progress. Beyond the time within the memory of most young people Fairmont High School had no past. True, there are memories of the old days to be cherished. Memories of noble teachers who were pioneers engaged in grubbing the dying past for a more enlightf ened future, and the memories of boys and girls who rose above their environf ments, but in no sense does there exist the memories of Alma Mater which form a skein of sentiment to grow stronger with the years. Fairmont High School and its achievements dates from the erection of the build- ing on the knoll at Fifth street. Here, where the Indians fought, bled and died, and where the soldiers in blue pitched their tents, was born the spirit of high school education in Fairmont. In 1905 that building was a big undertaking. Compared to the protest over the use of Loop Park for a high school site, the project at Fifth street was a roar compared to a whisper. It looked big and grand in those days, and grand and big it looks to us now-those of us who watched it grow from a toddling infant to the big chap that outgrew his clothes. And from Fifth street to Loop Park is a big jump. To the eyes of no older folks its dazzle is great. We see in it the fulfillment of a life-long dream, an expensive and gor- geous sacriice laid upon the altar of the god of culture. And if anybody bespeak it ill, let him bethink him one who loves it well! if The Maples I -C. E. SMITH. 'Ten