Celebrating a century
Mildred “Middy” Egbers Koper, a 1933 Coeur d’Alene High School graduate, remembers the Girls General Association as a fun club for students who wanted to be active in school. “We had a big program called ‘Stunt Night.’ Each class had to put on a stunt,” she recalls. “A prize was given to the best stunt.” Ace Walden, Class of 1925, remembers how the Girls General Association got him kicked out of school. “The Girls General Association had a meeting at night,” he explains. “Some of the guys knew about it. They made squawkers out of pieces of wood and string and turned the lights out. … It scared the little girls.”
Although he didn’t participate in the hijinks, he had heard about it, and the next morning Walden was called to the principal’s office.
“When the principal asked me questions about who raised the dickens the night before, I told him I didn’t know,” he recalls. “He said, ‘You’re out of school!’ “
After Walden’s father talked to the principal, Walden was allowed back in. “I thought it was funny, but (my dad) didn’t.”
Koper and Walden are just two of many CHS alumni who were called back to their alma mater to help kick off the 100th anniversary of Coeur d’Alene High School. They and dozens of others rode around the track in classic automobiles and were announced before the first football game of the season in August. The event kicked off a year of activities to “celebrate a century of excellence.”
The school will mark its centennial in 2005, 100 years after becoming accredited. The school was organized a few years before, with the first class graduating in 1903.
The idea for the anniversary celebration grew out of efforts to develop and maintain CHS’s own traditions and uniqueness after the construction of Lake City High School, says CHS principal Steve Casey. The anniversary is a chance for students to “hook into” the past and see how they and the high school got where they are today.
“Dedication to family, school, community, country — that’s a fiber you can grow anything off of,” Casey says. “Academics is what you’re here for; you shouldn’t have to talk about it. You (also) ought to have pride, tradition, be a good person.
“What (students) are doing this year is a legacy.”
School history will be highlighted as the year progresses. Alumni and former teachers will be invited to events. For example, founders of the women’s sports programs were introduced at the CHS vs. Post Falls High School girls volleyball game. Likewise, former coaches and players will be announced at a boys soccer game in October. Other groups, such as band, choir and drama, are making plans to celebrate their history as well, Casey says.
The anniversary celebration will help to foster the idea the “you’re part of something bigger than yourself,” says CHS government teacher George Sayler, who has taught at CHS for 31 years. He has also taught history, economics and world religion, among other subjects.
“It’s like saying the Pledge of Allegiance. It won’t make you patriotic, but sometimes it connects. … I taught history, so I think history is important.”
And out of the celebration comes bits and pieces of the school’s history, sometimes entwined with the nation’s. For example, blue was not always the school’s color. One class used orange and black; another had green and white. “During World War II, they couldn’t get blue dye,” Casey says.
Alumna Koper remembers the impact of the Great Depression. The journalism class produced a school newspaper called “The White Pine.” When money to print the paper ran out, the Coeur d’Alene Press printed it in its paper. “The whole city got to read it,” Koper says.
A girls home economics class cooked the school’s lunches in the cafeteria until Depression-era budget cuts eliminated that. “Then we had to carry our lunches,” Koper recalls.
When Sayler started teaching in the 1970s, the school was still feeling the effects of the Vietnam War. “Students were more rebellious (then), more challenging of authority,” he says. “They’re more conservative, more traditional now.”
Athletics have always played an integral part of the school’s identity.
“We had a good football team,” recalls Koper. “We had a wonderful basketball team.”
She also recalls that girls had few athletic opportunities back then. “The girls were allowed to play basketball at noon and after class,” she says.
Girls also played intramural softball. “I liked real baseball. I didn’t like pitching a softball,” she says.
From the time he was “old enough to walk,” Walden wanted to be an athlete. “To be the big shot in high school, you had to get a letter in football or basketball,” he says.
However, though the 97-year-old now stands 6 feet tall, in high school he was 5-foot-7 and weighed 130 pounds. He still feels disappointment over his lack of success in athletics.
“You can’t try and try and try and not make it and not remember it,” he says.
Academically, however, he did well. “I think I graduated seventh out of 79.”
It was in 1927 that the name “Vikings” was chosen — by a group of students returning from Spokane. The school anthem was written by a student, Marianne Ruyle, of Sandpoint, a 1933 graduate.
During its 100-year history, the school has changed locations several times. It opened in the Central School Building on Wallace Avenue between Seventh and Eighth streets. In 1910 it moved to Seventh Street and Montana Avenue, where Phippeny Park is now. The school was housed there until 1954.
“It was an old-fashioned school,” says Joyce Lease Imus Sweeney, who graduated in 1944. “The bathrooms were in the basement. If you were on the top floor, you had to run clear to the basement.”
In 1955 a new Coeur d’Alene High School was constructed on 15th Street. That site is now home to Lake City Middle School. CHS has been at its current Fourth Street location since 1969.
Alumni say one difference between then and now is the amount of homework — today’s kids have more.
“My grandchildren study a whole lot more than I did,” Sweeney says. “I feel the school curriculum (now) is better than it was.”
Koper doesn’t recall a lot of homework, either. “We had study hall so we didn’t have to do as much homework.”
Did she really study in study hall?
“Some goofed off, I guess. I didn’t,” she said. “I don’t recall my parents telling me to study.”
In the three decades-plus that he’s been teaching, Sayler says the curriculum has become more “uniform,” and teachers don’t have the same freedom to teach what they want. There is less emphasis on vocational training than there used to be.
“There are more diverse styles of teaching; it’s not quite as book-centered,” he says.
Walden says students have more educational choices these days. Students of his day were given two choices — a college prep course or an “ordinary” course. He remembers his senior year classes included chemistry, civics, English literature and mathematics of some kind.
One of Koper’s favorite classes was typing. “I had a tremendous typing teacher,” she recalls. “She taught me how to type 100 words per minute. … She was teaching people how to earn a living (by) typing. Some kids had hysterics. They didn’t want to work that hard. I loved typing. When electric typewriters came in, I hated them. I thought they slowed me down.”
What’s moving fast these days is the pace of society, Casey says, and that’s why it’s important to keep ideas like tradition and loyalty in front of students.
“You don’t want to forget what got you here,” he says.