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Being a member of the last graduating class
of Akron Central High School (1970), I have great memories of my
high school days at Central High. Back in the "old days," we had
two gymnasiums, one for girls and one for boys. The boys' gym
was on the second floor above the math classrooms on the first
floor.
Every day at the beginning of math class,
the ceiling would start to rumble and shake; sometimes pieces of
paint would fall off and come down onto the desks and floor, and
the light fixtures would shake! Coach Joe Siegferth, the boys'
physical education teacher, always started off the boys' gym
classes with calisthenics. While the boys were doing jumping
jacks and laps on the gym floor above us, our math teacher, Mr.
Gross, just spoke louder. We all adjusted to this daily rattling
and shaking happening during math class!
Another memory I have is from the year
the Akron schools were trying to pass a school levy (it was
either 1969 or 1970). Students were asked to help pass the levy
by going door to door to talk with voters and give campaign
literature. We were called the "'59ers." We were called that
because at that time there were 59,000 students in Akron Public
Schools; and each one of us was "1 of 59,000 reasons to pass the
school levy." The levy did pass!
The last memory I have is a bittersweet
one. During my senior year at Central, we knew we would be the
last graduating class of "Wildcats." The underclassmen, the
classes of '71, '72 and '73, were nominating and voting on a new
mascot and school colors for their "new" school, Central-Hower.
Of course, the colors chosen were a combination of the Central
colors and Hower colors: red, white and blue. The mascot
selected, the "Eagles," was voted on after a contest to select a
new name. I remember the excitement and the sadness felt by all
of the students of an era ending and a new one beginning.
Thanks for the opportunity to share some
great memories I have of Akron Public Schools.
– by Kathie Capriolo
I remember when Sally Webster taught
kindergarten at Henry School, and Alice Green was my first-grade
teacher. Never let primary-grade teachers believe they don't
have impact on their students! I've never forgotten them, and
I'm now a grandmother. Nancy Hanks, Mason Elementary School,
fourth grade, gave me excellent math skills. In Mason School's
LRC, sixth grade, Mrs. Emerich read us weekly "serials" of Greek
mythology and left us in regular suspense until the next week's
library period. I still know most of those stories. In the '50s
girls could not wear slacks to high school, even in zero
weather, at Central High School (the Central "Wildcats").
– by Dotti Elmore
I remember when I went to school, we had
to walk home for lunch every day since we had no cafeteria or
lunchroom. So that was four times back and forth, and we didn't
have such things as school buses. I went to Miller School, which
is not used as a grade school now; but we had kindergarten
through eighth grade. In the seventh and eighth grades, we did
go to other rooms for different subjects with different
teachers. At that time there was no junior high as in the
present time. My brother, Steven Likevich, who was older than I,
had perfect attendance through 12 years of school, which is
quite an accomplishment. He received an award upon graduation
from high school.
Going to South High School was a big
change because the pupils came from so many different grade
schools, and we certainly learned a great deal about different
cultures and backgrounds. Most of us, at least 70%, were
first-generation Americans; our parents learned the value of
education and appreciated it so we used it to great advantage.
– by Mary Ann (Likevich)
Franz
My grandmother and grandfather lived on
East Thornton Street. I stayed with them and attended Leggett
Elementary School when I was in kindergarten. Mrs. Eva Petty was
my teacher. When I wasn't in school, I'd go to Leggett with the
neighborhood children to play. One day, the custodian came down
the steps in the front of the school and asked me if I would
like some crayons. I loved to color and had many coloring books.
I said "yes," and he handed me a large green tin can filled to
the top with bits and pieces of crayons! I was amazed. I had
that tin box of crayons for years and years. I always looked for
it when I visited my grandparents' house. Just recently we were
cleaning out my grandmother's house, and I hoped my box of
crayons would show up. It never did, but I'll always remember
that custodian and the green tin of crayons.
– by Joanne Girard
I remember when I was five years old, and
I attended Miller School. This was many, many years ago. I was
in kindergarten, and on May Day I remember we had a special
program. There was a small stage in the auditorium, and everyone
got to see the special program. I had been picked to dance
around the Maypole with several other little girls. It was so
much fun and the first time I had been picked to be in a special
program! The other girls and I each held on to a pretty colored
streamer that was attached to the Maypole and danced around it.
We were all dressed in beautiful dresses. After our little dance
was over, I got to sit in a front-row seat next to Mrs. Mercer,
our principal! I don't know what made me the happiest – dancing
around the Maypole or sitting next to Mrs. Mercer in 1927.
– by Marie Kiehl
I have a few memories of Akron Public
Schools I'd like to share. The three schools I went to are now
called something else.
I went to Miller School on Steiner Avenue
from kindergarten through the first half of fourth grade. I
remember going out to recess and playing on the tall swings and
sliding boards. Now Miller School is called the Ott Building.
I then went to Spicer School through the
eighth grade. Two memories come to mind. One time our class was
singing in the Christmas program, and we were standing along the
wall in the auditorium. It got so hot that I started to faint;
and, before I knew it, my favorite fifth-grade teacher Olga
Adams was by my side and took me out for fresh air. She read
part of the Bible to us usually every day, and I loved to watch
her talk because her eyebrows went up and down all the time. I
always tell people about her eyebrows and it makes them laugh,
but it makes me feel happy because she was a good teacher. The
other memory is a sad one. The ONLY time I had a detention in
eighth grade was the day John F. Kennedy was shot. I got the
detention because I took a small transistor radio to school.
While we were in detention, we listened to the news and then we
were sent home. Now Spicer School is part of the University of
Akron.
I went to Central High School, and we
were called the Wildcats. My favorite teacher was Judy Chapman.
I have many memories that involve her – going to the Montreal
Expo, her becoming a cheerleader advisor with no experience (but
she ended up being great), and her coming to my wedding. I loved
her very much. Now Central High School is called Central-Hower
(to some, not me), and they are called the Eagles.
– by Debra McDonald
I attended Spicer Elementary School for
half of my kindergarten year. My teacher would let us ride a
tricycle up and down the hall for good behavior. I remember
being transferred from Spicer Elementary to Henry Elementary
during the middle of my kindergarten year. At Henry Elementary,
Mrs. Young was my teacher. We built a choo-choo train in the
classroom.
First grade was also spent at Henry
Elementary. I loved first grade. I can still remember sitting in
those little old-fashioned desks that were nailed down to the
floor in rows. I remember sitting in a half circle during
reading group time. My teacher used Ideal Phonics charts to
teach reading. In our reading books, I read of Alice and Jerry
and their dog, Jip. In my mind, they were real and we played
together and had many adventures in the meadow near their
grandmother's farm.
For second grade through sixth grade, I
attended Mason School. My teachers were Mrs. Jones (second
grade), Miss Salem (third grade), Miss Barbara (fourth grade),
Mrs. Harris (fifth grade), and Mr. Feldon (sixth grade).
I attended Goodrich Junior High School
for seventh through ninth grade. The highlight of those years
was the biology class I had in the ninth grade taught by Mrs.
Ealy.
Tenth through 12th grade was spent at
Central-Hower. I dearly loved attending Central-Hower. I cherish
the memories of our pep assemblies and attending championship
basketball games when Bob Seigferth was the head coach there.
How I remember entering into the auditorium every Friday for pep
assemblies. Excitement was in the air. Our team was on stage. We
were winners! It was a wonderful and glorious feeling to be a
part of a winning team, but it was equally heart-wrenching to
know the agony of defeat after so long a trail of victories.
At the end of my 11th-grade year,
Central-Hower High School was torn down to make way for a new
Central-Hower High School. Everyone was shifted to the Hower
building on Exchange Street, which was then across the street
from Children's Medical Center. Dental Assisting was my vocation
during my last year of high school, and Mrs. Snyder was my
dental assisting teacher.
Searching for old pictures of Akron's
school buildings is a hobby of mine. Learning the history of
Akron's school system and how it developed is an exciting
adventure for me.
Overall, I'd say my first-grade year left
the strongest impression in my memory. Perhaps those first-grade
memories are the reasons why I love teaching first grade today
in the Akron Public Schools system.
– by Malynda Riles
One day I went to Crosby school; and they
were giving out awards, such as "best student, "best behaved"
and "the most progress." There was a little boy (I don't think
he was more than kindergarten-age); and every time they gave an
award he'd stand up to receive it, and it would go to somebody
else. And he'd go "oh, darn." The principal, Mrs. Rittenhouse,
had cautioned the children, "We're going to have a school board
member here, so be on good behavior;" and he was going "darn
it." So finally they said, "Now here's the best all-around award
to the best student in the whole school in terms of grades,
behavior and progress." The little boy stood up–and they
mentioned somebody else. He began booing. So the principal sent
him to the office. On the way out, I saw him sitting there. I
said, "You got yourself in trouble, didn't you?" And this little
boy looks at me and says, "I can handle it, man."
– by Sam Salem
I remember when, at the age of six, I
entered the first grade of Spicer School. At this point I would
like to say that my mother also went to Spicer School some 20
years before me. I am now 87 years young.
Mr. App was the principal; and I remember
some of my teachers, namely Miss Randolph, Miss Ion, Miss
Stecklen, Miss Wolcott, Miss Crispin, Miss Rook, Miss Rivkin,
and Miss Naylor.
In those days we had a music teacher, Mr.
Nathaniel Glover–tall, straight in height, gray hair and
seemingly quite elderly. He came once or twice a week. If a
student failed to listen, Mr. Glover would pick up a piece of
chalk and toss it at him. Mr. Glover always came with his tuning
fork.
Miss Randolph, a tall, stately lady,
taught me and my mother earlier. I remember her because during a
Home and School League meeting she called upon me to go to the
blackboard and do an arithmetic problem because I did such nice
figures. I have been inspired by her these many years. On
occasion, if the electricity went off during class, the teacher
would take a book, go to the window and read to the class (the
lights were a bulb fastened to a wire hanging down from the
ceiling).
Spicer School did not have facilities for
"Domestic Science" as it was called, so we would go to Mason
School once in a while for a cooking lesson.
In the corner of the outside steps was a
beautiful Bleeding Heart plant which I always enjoyed when it
bloomed. I was very fond of flowers.
After eight grades, I moved on to Central
High School for four years. The auditorium had just been built.
One event which stands out was the half
day off when the fleas (from the pigeons) that had taken over
the tower and found their way into some of the school rooms had
to be exterminated.
Central had no ball field or bleachers so
we went to a field on Wooster Avenue, and we stood at the edge
and cheered while our team met the enemy. In those days there
were no girls' athletics.
Some teachers I recall were Mabel Todd,
Mrs. Brady, Inez and Gladys Parshall, Mrs. Richardson (Latin),
Miss Dawson, Miss Goff, Miss Ammons, Miss Phillips, Mr. Roose,
Miss Simmons, Miss Schwinn, and Mrs. Shaffer. Mr. Bowman was the
principal, and Nell Glover had her office there.
Miss Todd and Mrs. Brady and the Glee
Club put on musicals for which they were well known. Two of the
musicals I sang in were "The Red Mill" and "The Three Twins."
I became a member of the Censowe and the
Squire and Scroll clubs.
Many memories come to mind from time to
time, and I am thankful for my education received in Akron
Public Schools.
As time went on my son also went to
Windemere Elementary School and Ellet High School. I served two
years as a PTA President as my interest in school affairs is
still a priority. I graduated in the class of 1927, 70 years
ago.
– by Mrs. Charles
Slaybaugh
Every year when I return to Akron, I
check out the status of Henry School on North Forge Street
between Arch and Nebraska streets.
It was a century old in 1983 and is
certainly worth some sort of commemoration, if only by this
solitary passerby in the century.
I entered Henry School in the third grade
in September 1918 when I was eight, my parents having moved from
Milwaukee, Wis., like so many others mesmerized by the booming
wartime rubber industry. It should be explained for the benefit
of young people (are you listening, children?) that Akron was
then the Rubber Center of the World. Though it has not yet, I
think, made the screen of a video game, it was an authentic war
nevertheless. I know this because I remember a hearse from
Sweeney's Funeral Home rolling down Market Street carrying a
sign, "We Want the Kaiser." He declined, it seems, preferring to
seek asylum in Holland. So much for Akron, the City of
Opportunity.
It was positively ravishing to be a boy
in those days. Goodyear blimps, stationed at Wingfoot Lake, were
constantly being test-flown over town. My pa (there was none of
this "The Old Man" bit then) would bring home a wooden dummy
drill rifle; a reject gas mask with a wonderful rubber flap
valve that allowed you to blow out but not to breathe in; or a
tiny, heavy jug of mercury from a broken mercury-vapor lamp at
work. Or he would take me out to Seiberling Field to watch the
Homestead Grays, a black team, play (or the House of David, an
all-bearded team). One night he, along with our roomer, William
E. Buzzell, took me downtown to watch a huge, robed Ku Klux Klan
parade down High Street. Overhead flew a plane whose wings and
fuselage were outlined in lights – a fiery cross. It was all
very mysterious and scary.
And on Saturday afternoon I always went,
with what used to be described as religious fervor, to the
Knickerbocker Theater on East Market Street near Kickwood to see
Nabel Normand or Harry Houdini in cliffhanging silent serials or
the suave, macho Douglas Fairbanks in "The Thief of Baghdad."
Nobody I knew was
that
suave, not even Ed Barnaby who managed Acme No. 20 at Adams and
Hazel streets.
Unlike the boy of universal folklore,
which I had neglected to read up on, I liked school. I
especially remember the sixth grade, run by Ella Rhodes, to
whose memory now, in my old age, I extend my blessing. She was a
dear. The classroom seemed very large, with a high ceiling and
tall windows which in summer could be pulled down from the top
with a long pole – provided you could locate the socket into
which the prong at the end of the pole was inserted. It was no
mean skill, not easily mastered by a small, myopic boy.
Above the slate blackboards hung maps
which could be pulled down like roller blinds. English
possessions, upon which I never personally saw the sun ever set,
were in pink. I remember idly noting how neatly Africa, though
separated by thousands of miles, fit into South America. Alas, I
never rose to the level of abstraction necessary to formulate
the tectonic plate theory of the origin of the continents. Henry
School thereby lost the opportunity of having a bronze plaque
mounted on its walls informing the gaping citizenry of Akron and
the world of the great scientific insight achieved there.
When I remember best about the sixth
grade was the music. Oh, there was arithmetic; but I was then,
as now, paralyzingly inept. I knew as well as the next person
that 12 x 12 equaled 124; but, annoyingly, many times it came
out 144. But I was
fascinated by the onion skin overlay practice sheets on our
exercise pads.
We did a lot of singing – rounds like
"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" or "Juanita." "Neeta,
Wah-Hah-Hah-Neeta," we sang, in a relentless treble. The house
favorite, however, which we were allowed to sing only as a
special dispensation, was "A Capital Ship," a rollicking
juvenile sailors' chantey which I remember yet. It went:
A capital ship
For an ocean
trip
On a walloping window blind.
No wind that blew
Dismayed her crew
Or troubled the captain's mind-d-d,
etc.
Every once in a while, the city music
supervisor, Nathan Glover, would drop in. He seemed very old,
set the pitch with a tuning fork – very powerful magic, indeed –
and left messages on the blackboard to b-natural and c-sharp.
Some years later, his daughter Nellie herself became the
supervisor. His son Carl, a dapper sophisticate wearing ice
cream pants and sporty oxfords, who had been conductor of the
pit orchestra at the Colonial Theater on Mill Street, later
became the band director at Central High School. He was also an
admired role model who voiced world-weary, equally sporty
observations on music, life and love.
The higher culture was not neglected.
Every year a music memory contest was held. This consisted of, I
think, a hundred records of classical music, snippets of which
had to be identified. You won a gold, silver or bronze
medallion, depending on how well you did. It was mostly the
girls, wearers of hair ribbons and otherwise torchbearers of
culture as well, who participated. Once, the music teachers,
hoping to sandbag one of us innocents, slipped a ringer on the
Victrola, a record not on the list. Sure enough, up shot Max
Griffen's hand. "That's 'Traumerei,'" he said; and so it was.
That's what came of taking private violin lessons. On another
occasion, I, whose cultural pretensions took the form of trying
to make gunpowder in our cellar out of sulfur, saltpeter and
charcoal, was stricken bug-eyed when Mildred Poster, a
sultry-eyed harem-beauty type, complete in ballet tutu, spun out
of the cloakroom dancing to the music of one of Dvorak's
"Slavonic Dances."
Occasionally, larger productions would
get mounted. I remember one evening performance for parents
during the war in which a chorus of girls dressed respectively
in red, white and blue and waving small flags, sang a song which
ended, "Then hurrah for the three little sisters, hurrah for the
red, white and blue." Christmas was always a special occasion. I
recall Eddie Bergland, among others, singing "We Three Kings of
Orient Are," while the rest of us stood watching, massed on the
wooden staircase leading to the second floor, wondering hardly
at all what "Myrrh-is-mine-its-bitter-perfume" meant.
Occasionally, the orchestra would put on a brief concert. It
would play waltzes like "Over the Waves," a favorite at roller
skating rinks. I played the piccolo, taught in a dank, dark room
in the massive basement by a Mr. Henry, a contemporary martyr,
listening to me work over "Robin Adair." It must have been
awful, all of it.
Well, that's a small, selective part of
how it was in the late teens of the century at Henry School.
After many transformations, the school, now absorbed by City
Hospital, has most recently been made into a child daycare
center for hospital employees. This is as it should be. Our
house on Nebraska Street, which ran along one side of the
school, is long since gone. The black hole of time, like the
black holes in space, inexorably sucks even memories into it, to
be lost irretrievably.
It is a little strange and a little sad
to think that the small boy who scuffled his way down the street
through the autumn leaves on his way home from school and heard
Ted Warner banging out "Beautiful Ohio" and "Yes, We Have No
Bananas" on the piano is now a somewhat touchy old gentleman
with a few memories not very important to anybody except him.
But Henry School deserves a
commemoration. For the best part of a century, it launched many
generations on their life voyage. Not many things make it to a
hundred these days.
– by Chalmers K. Stewart
As a native Akronite, I am a graduate of
Akron Public Schools. I attended Henry Elementary School (over
near City Hospital), which included eight grades. Henry was an
old school with wooden floors and great big wooden staircases.
The Board of Education decided to remodel the school. As a
result, I had to walk a whole year to Bowen School at 70 North
Broadway. I remember how the building (which is now the
Administration Building) looked. On the second floor I had
English and could look out over the viaduct, and in the basement
was the gym.
Going back to Henry was a real treat –
brand new individual lockers, inside fire exits and new lights
in the whole building. I think Henry was closed permanently in
1977. It is now a daycare facility for children whose parents
work at the hospital.
I enjoyed my grade school years and also
my years at Central High School from which I graduated.
– by Patricia Vinson |
