Honored graduates

An Army major general, a journalist, a coach, a school principal and a deceased WWII pilot will be inducted into Rogers High School’s Walk of Fame next Thursday. The presentations will be made at the school’s homecoming convocation at 10 a.m. in the school’s Ellingsen Field House.

The Walk of Fame began in 1993 to honor Rogers graduates who have been successful in their profession and active in community affairs.

Candidates are nominated through the community. Profiles and biographies are developed and each year the school’s alumni officers vote, selecting five or six inductees from as many as 80 nominees.

“It’s obviously a big honor for the people who are chosen, but the primary purpose is to give the kids some good role models. Rogers is a poor economic area and so many of the kids think they can’t be successful if they graduate from Rogers. That’s one of the reasons we do this at the homecoming con. They get to see these people; they get to hear their bios read,” said Sharon Travis, Walk of Fame coordinator.

For more information about Roger’s Walk of Fame visit www.spokaneschools.org/Rogers/alumni/WOF.stm to view the online notebook containing biographies of all 108 inductees.

The inductees

Barbara “Barb” (Audie) Farnsworth was the valedictorian for Rogers High School in 1975. She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Washington State University and has taught at Rogers for 24 years.

Farnsworth has coached gymnastics, volleyball and tennis and served as a class and associated student body adviser.

Her community involvement includes: Meals on Wheels, foster parent to 17 children, Food Bank volunteer, Hoopfest Court Monitor, North Hill Christian Church Elder and Project Coordinator for Project UNIQUE ‘81.

She has won numerous sports officiating awards and was the 2003 GSL Girls Tennis Coach of the Year.

Maj. Gen. Dennis E. Hardy graduated from Rogers in 1968. He is the Commander General of the 24th Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas. He is a 1972 Gonzaga University graduate and earned a Master of Business Administration from Washington State University.

Hardy has held a variety of command and staff assignments in the United States and overseas including Germany, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo.

As 24th Division Commander, Hardy leads a combination of active and National Guard armored brigades.

Hardy served as the grand marshal of the 2005 Spokane Lilac Armed Forces Parade. He and his wife, Diane Gayhek, also from Spokane, have three daughters.

Arthur Milton Hughes graduated in 1937. He entered the Flying Cadets of the U.S. Air Force after three years of college at Eastern Washington State College. He received his commission as a second lieutenant a week after Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was a pilot of the B17E, Hellzapoppin’, in the 97th Bomb Group, 341st Bomb Squad of the 8th Air Force. They were the first group in England to bomb German-occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

In 1942, Hughes was assigned to flying duties in North Africa. On Nov. 20, 1942, as Hughes and eight of his crew members were standing on the tarmac in Maison Blanche in Algeria they were gunned down by enemy fire. Hughes’ daughter Karen was born a month later. His widow, Helen Joy Hughes Schaefer, set up a $25,000 scholarship through the Foundation Northwest to be given to a worthy Rogers student to help with first-year college expenses.

Christine “Chris” (Flaa) Lynch is a 1971 graduate. She attended Spokane Community College and Eastern Washington University.

Lynch is the principal at Shaw Middle School. She has served as a Girl Scout Leader, Neighborhood Education Team member, United Way volunteer, and was a member of the Instructional Equity Citizens Advisory Council.

For the past few years, Lynch has been involved in the Spokane Hillyard Rotary and fund-raising and selecting scholarship recipients from Rogers. She has created a literacy project to provide books for every fourth-grader in the Rogers area.

As Rotary president for 2004-05, she has become involved in Interact and helps promote that club’s development at Rogers. She is a liaison with Rogers DECA to provide monetary support from Rotary and to provide community service opportunities for the DECA students.

Robert Payne, a 1956 Rogers graduate, received a bachelor’s degree in communications and journalism from Stanford University in 1960.

He retired in 2001, after a 41-year career in the newspaper business, including 19 years at The Spokesman-Review as copy editor, sports writer and executive sports editor and 22 years at the Tacoma News Tribune as sports writer, section editor, senior copy editor and newsroom manager.

Payne served as president of the Track and Field Writers of America and covered two Olympic Games, five Olympic Trials, and 15 NCAA track meets and has won awards for sports feature writing.

He was the Inland Empire Sports Writers and Broadcasters president and awards chairman and on the Inland Empire Sports Awards Banquet Steering Committee. He received two Greater Spokane Sports Association Awards and in 1987 was the first winner of the Richard Pratt Award.

In Puyallup and Tacoma, Payne is involved in the American Field Service Exchange Student Program and Star Track.

Farnsworth, Hardy, Lynch and Payne will attend the presentation. Don Hughes, a Walk of Fame inductee for 2000, will accept the award for his brother, Art.