Image: HI collection
As a respite from the seemingly constant negative news about education and schools, we reflect, if only briefly, to our city’s early success as a place with beloved and highly regarded schools.
Since Howe High School was the last of those featured here to be opened, in September 1938, we wonder how to restore them again to a status noteworthy enough to grace the cover of a post card.
Did you attend one of these schools, and if so, what do you remember most? And what advice would you have for schools today?
I graduated from TC Howe and my sister graduated from Tech. Later she (Peggy Berchekas Clark, now living in Houston, Texas) returned to Tech as the first principal of Tech (2001-2006) that was a Tech alumnus. i don’t have any handy ideas about how to restore their prestige as learning institutions, but I bet she would!
Remember Howe
I attended Howe in the mid 1950s and my three kids attended Howe from the mid 1970s through the mid 1980s. My first memories are of our grade school basketball games played against the grade schools that were in the Howe “District”. Some of the kids that finished 8th grade at PS#62 chose to go to Arsenal Tech high school and some of us chose Howe. I played freshman football for Howe in 1952, and went on to play four seasons with friends that I still meet with monthly for lunch. Howe was a neighborhood school until integration laws changed breaking up the Howe neighborhood and traditions.
My advice for schools today is to build good traditions that will be passed on to all the future students. The following interviews are steeped with traditions that made Indianapolis schools beloved and highly regarded.
Thomas Stirling 4/9/79:
http://digitallibrary.imcpl.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/ioh/id/36/rec/2
Samuel Kelley 12/17/80:
http://digitallibrary.imcpl.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/ioh/id/32/rec/8