Century of scholarship

In the late 19th century, the area around Cheney and the West Plains was growing quickly. Children were taught in a brick building on College Avenue and C Street in Cheney. There were four teachers and six levels of study.

“In 1890, the school board and citizens decided to build a new school across the street from the present Fisher Administration Building,” according to the Cheney High School 2006 Alumni Directory. “The building housed only eight grades, since high schools had no legal status in Washington.”

The school continued to grow after the state Legislature approved high schools in 1895, and in 1909, Cheney High School congratulated its first graduating class of five students.

On Saturday, around 250 students will be the 100th graduating class from Cheney High School.

It is the kick-off event of celebrations that will continue throughout the next school year, according to Tom Gresch, the principal of the school.

He said their graduation ceremony is very traditional – the honor society students wear a hood, the academic achievers will wear their gold cords. But this year, the school is branching out to add gold to the tassels worn on the mortarboards to mark the special occasion.

The school still only has one valedictorian and one salutatorian.

“It’s very important to recognize those two individuals,” Gresch said.

The ceremony’s program this year not only lists all of the graduates, but will feature pictures of past high schools, since there have been several buildings that housed the school over the past century. It also contains a brief history of Cheney High School and Cheney Public Schools, since that district has incorporated several other districts over the years and now serves students over a very large area of the West Plains.

“It’s important to stop and say, this is where we’ve been, this is where we are and this is where we’re going,” Gresch said.

Gresch is visibly proud of the school the students and their accomplishments. Ask him about any club, athletic group or music class and his face lights up to explain how hard each student and teacher works in each group. He said the all of the groups’ successes are part of long-standing traditions in the school.

“We have things to celebrate in every area,” Gresch said.

One of the traditions the school has maintained over the years is a large, framed composite of pictures of individual graduates. The composites adorn the halls of the high school, and the older composites still hang in the Fisher Administration Building, which at one time was the high school. There are now 100 of them.

Gresch said there are plans in the works with the school’s alumni association which will have its annual picnic in July.

The picnic will include tours of the current school, which opened its doors Sept. 12, 1966, and received a major overhaul in 1992.

This fall, incoming freshmen will get a tailgate party to welcome them to the school. There will be cheers, free hot dogs and Gresch hopes to incorporate the alumni association into the party.

The alumni association is very active in Cheney. One of its big projects is to donate money every year to Dollars for Scholars.

“They’ve come through so many times for the community,” Gresch said.

Some of the school’s most notable graduates include Lt. Col. Michael P. Anderson, one of six astronauts who died aboard the space shuttle Columbia; Steve Emtman, a former NFL football player and now a developer in Cheney; shooter Launi Meili, a gold-medal winner in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games; and Richard DeMulling, a former Cheney High School football player who also played in the NFL.

Gresch also takes pride in the fact that many Cheney graduates return to the school and teach.

“So many alumni come back and teach here,” Gresch said. “Our graduates go out into the world and come back.”

Out of 60 teachers at the school, 10 of them are Cheney grads, and he said that well over 50 percent of the classified staff are also graduates.

There are plans in the works to sell special T-shirts and sweat shirts commemorating the occasion in the school store. Organizers are preparing collages of pictures from past yearbooks to be put into a calendar that will be for sale as well.

Gresch said the funds from these sales will either benefit the school or a charity.

“The students are the reason we are here,” Gresch said. He hopes the traditions of excellence at the school will continue for years to come and is excited to celebrate a century of education.

“We’re a good school and proud of what we’ve done,” he said.

Inside

Read about Cheney class of 2008./9