Summer Time is School Time for DMPS Alums
A Roosevelt grad checks to see if the combination still works on their old locker.
Instead of USA maybe we should bill ourselves the RSA, as in Reunited States of America. Whether it’s families or teams or high school and college classes, we have a penchant for reunion. Life is a cha-cha with those periodic steps back sprinkled in along with the inexorable steps forward.
High school reunions are in a class (couldn’t be helped) by themselves; the quintessential regrouping ritual in our culture, perhaps because they bring us back to the place and time where the first real parting of ways happens.
Saturday morning Roosevelt High School was the site of a 2 for 1 tour as the classes of 1975 and 1980 made time in their hectic weekend social agendas to revisit the hallowed hallways where they came of age decades ago. The reunion tours are a joint effort of the Roosevelt Foundation, an alumni booster group, and the current school administration. They’re a good way for the foundation to expand the membership and fundraising base and who would make a more decent docent than principal Kevin Biggs?
Members of the Roosevelt classes of 1975 and 1980 teamed up for a school tour during their recent reunions.
“Welcome home!” Biggs told a group of grads that trickled into the Roosevelt auditorium Saturday morning and eventually grew to about 50 memory laners. Biggs is about to begin his third year at TRHS. He grew up in California but he said that right from the start at Roosevelt he “could smell the history and the laughter and the tradition and the memories in this place.”
Foundation president Marty Kenworthy is a 1976 grad who fell right in between the classes that regathered over the weekend and he too was on hand to welcome them back to campus. It was another opportunity for him to spread the word about the foundation which was established in 1983. He explained that it generates a quarterly newsletter, Rider Recall, and coordinates fundraising events and campaigns ranging from golf outings to galas like the R Party. Monies raised are then used to fund scholarships and fill budget gaps. “We help pay for choir risers, library books and baseball dugouts,” Kenworthy told the assembled. When Roosevelt was renovated recently with revenues from the penny option sales tax the foundation pitched in with a significant capital campaign of its own that broadened the scope of the improvements.
With the fundraising pump thus primed the two classes were off on their separate but simultaneous tours. While the football team and the cheerleaders practiced outdoors for the next in a long line of seasons at a school that dates all the way back to 1923, ex-teens prowled the hallways to see what’s new and what’s not. Some stopped at their old lockers, surprised to discover that they still remember the combinations but not surprised that the locks have been changed.
Roosevelt is not alone in adding a practical side to the longstanding social custom of class reunions. All of the DMPS high schools have developed modern ways and means of tapping into the goodwill and nostalgia of alumni to the benefit of current and future students.
Lincoln: “We have done three (reunion tours) this summer for three different classes and have another coming up for the Class of 2005 on Friday, August 21st,” reported Lincoln’s Community School Coordinator Cara Graziano. “I am also on the Board of Alumni (Class of 2005) so we coordinate the tours through our alumni association.
Currently, Al Graziano (Cara’s uncle) is our tour guide. He graduated with the class of 1960 and is in our Alumni Hall of Fame, but he also retired as principal of Lincoln in 2010. During his time, he oversaw the $27.6 million building renovation that was finished in 2008 so he has a ton of information about the building- it’s a very interesting tour!”
East: East is the proud home of one of the nation’s longest running and largest alumni associations. Besides its annual batch of class reunions and other fundraising traditions East opened its doors last spring for a tour in collaboration with the Des Moines Historical Society on May 30th that was open to the public.
Hoover: “The tours we have given so far have been run by myself, principal Cindy Flesch or our associate activities director, Haywood Boston,” said Huskie AD Melissa Floyd. “Usually someone from our foundation accompanies us. This summer we have given a tour to the class of 1995 and we still have tours for the class of 1990 and the class of 1970 to come.”
North: According to alumni association president Kristine Weinheimer, “Tours of North do happen with class reunions. North is in a unique situation from the other high schools since one of the former North buildings is now Moulton. Several alumni who graduated from the ‘Old North’ attend our annual all class reunion in May. We occasionally offer a bus ride to the old building during that reunion. Those graduates have been able to take a tour of Moulton – although it looks a lot different. Also at our all class reunions, those in attendance are encouraged to look around on their own. We do not have formal tours for that but we do have current students available who can answer questions or show someone a specific area. Individual class reunions do take tours of the building. I am currently working with the Class of 1970 to set up a tour for their 45th reunion in September.”
Tech: The Engineer alumni association hosted a tour of the facilities at Central Campus for alums from the classes of 1980-86 on August 14th. Few buildings have undergone as sweeping an evolution and repurposing as premises that started out as a Ford Model-T assembly factory.
Collectively, DMPS high schools are wisely reaching out to former students for their help in continuing the district’s proud tradition of first class public schools. Besides the current enrollment of 32,000+ there are many more than that number just waiting to be invited back in lots of different ways.
Like the song says, “Reunited and it feels so good.”
