Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The real story, 40 years later

Reunion of Hope High School’s class of 1970 brings back a little-known memory that led to an unforgettable year

 
By Ralph Routon

 Throughout the well-preserved WPA gym at Washington State Park, members of Hope High School’s Class of 1970 reminisced about the old days.

 Some were split into one-on-one conversations. Other clusters were larger, even friends from the same grade schools — Garland, Brookwood, Paisley, Yerger — taking pictures and sharing stories from the past.

 This gathering, which took place on the first weekend of October, had been a mixture of sweetness and sadness, bringing back to life the first year of full integration. We remembered how everyone got along so well. How the football team, winning the Region 4-AA championship (there were no state playoffs then), became such a spirit-igniting force. How the smaller student groups and organizations — from the band and cheerleaders to the Hi-Lights newspaper and Bobcat yearbook staffs — merged blacks and whites as smoothly as anyone could have imagined.

 We also couldn’t help but notice, 40 years later, that more than 30 from our class were no longer with us. And at Hope’s homecoming football game the night before, we found out the other classes having reunions from 1975 and 1980 had lost only a few by comparison.

 But the Class of 1970 still has its history. So much history. And for the crowd of classmates and significant others, adding up to more than 100 people taking part, the one feeling everyone shared was that no other class at HHS could match this group for being at the forefront of changing times.

Yerger High School, after nearly a century of educating generations of blacks in the community, turned into the junior high for everyone. And nearly 400 teenagers came from one end of Walker Street to the other in the late summer of 1969, creating an enrollment of about 800 in the top four grades at Hope High.

Signs of the times

Nobody knew what to expect then, but the grownups around town certainly knew what to fear. They had seen the racial strife that had struck other communities across the South. They wondered if trouble would come to Hope, and it was easy for many parents and civic leaders to be paranoid. After all, you could still drive around downtown in those days and see a few worn but still readable signs from past decades of discrimination — some as simple as noting different entrances for “colored” people.

 But when the time came, there was no discord. No conflict or confrontation. Nothing.

 And yes, the football season had a lot to do with that. After several losing years, the Hope Bobcats suddenly became a powerhouse, thanks in no small part to the arrival of many former Yerger Tigers. Crowds flocked to Hammons Stadium, cheering victory after victory, and it didn’t matter to anyone that the unquestioned No. 1 star, tailback Artis Martin, was one of those who came from Yerger.

 From my perspective covering all those games, doing radio broadcasts for KXAR (helped by a skinny ninth-grader named Mike Huckabee, who's much better known now) and writing stories every day in the Hope Star, that football team definitely was extraordinary, peaking at just the right moment. The regular-season finale was on the road against unbeaten Arkadelphia, at Henderson’s just-opened new stadium. Arkadelphia led 7-0 after three quarters, but Martin broke a long touchdown run and the Bobcats went on to win, 14-7, for the 4-AA West title.

 Then came the 4-AA playoff at home against Camden, which had won the East division. It was a tense, defensive struggle, with Hope taking a 7-6 lead into the closing seconds. Then, on the final play of that amazing 11-2 season, all-state linebacker Larry McWilliams intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown and a 13-6 victory.

 Big plays. Big moments. Big victories. But it wasn’t just about the games that year. For me, the biggest inspiration — and perhaps the best reason for everyone getting along so well — came earlier each Friday.

 Before integration, students filled the HHS auditorium for pep rallies. But with enrollment suddenly doubled, the only place that could handle everyone was Jones Field House. And that gym each week turned into a pulsating, roaring, spine-tingling showcase of excitement. Before the students came, the band’s drum section — yes, all of them from Yerger, bringing soul and a magnetic beat — would set up camp in the large gym and start pounding away. Everyone juked, clapped and danced in the aisles, and the cheerleaders did their part to build the frenzy. When the team walked in together, those screams literally shook the building.

 I always thought those pep rallies were what really pulled Hope High School together. Many of us wondered how hard it had to be for the Yerger kids, losing the identity of what had been their school. But at those pep rallies, everyone was united.

We all knew something else. Hope wasn’t winning championships before full integration, and neither was Yerger. But together, they could win. And together, they could make Hope a role model for other schools and communities making so many difficult adjustments.

Untold story

One piece, though, was always missing. Where did that unity, and the football success, really begin? I always had thought a key person had to be Willie Tate, the Yerger head coach, who willingly became an assistant to the HHS head coach, Ronnie Higgins. George Straughter also came over as a staff member. I thought of bringing Tate back for this reunion as a surprise, knowing he had spent years as a college coach at Henderson, endearing himself to everyone whose lives he touched until his retirement a few years ago.

 But when I tried to contact coach Tate, a terse message came back from Henderson. Though he’s only 67, he’s in a nursing home, suffering from Alzheimer’s.

 The reunion weekend still turned out fine. At the homecoming game, we saw today’s Bobcats winning for the first time in 2010, but showing much potential with a new head coach providing direction and pulling together the makings of a successful program for the future. Along with everyone else, we sang the same alma mater, which has endured through the years.

 We also toured the modernized, impressive main high school building, from the all-new cafeteria to the auditorium that still hasn’t lost its character and on to the superbly equipped computer classrooms. Many of our class, especially those of us who now live elsewhere, came away feeling much better — and prouder — about the school and its future than we had expected.

 So perhaps that would be enough, and perhaps there would be no untold story, no heartwarming new tale from the past, at this reunion to help explain why our final year of 1969-70 became so incredible.

 Then I saw Ronny Brown. He wasn’t a superstar for the Bobcats, but he was a team leader, and a rock-solid, dependable all-conference lineman who stood out on offense and defense. He went on to be a successful high school coach and administrator in north Arkansas, but as this reunion wound down, he was sitting quietly with his wife. We started talking about our senior year, about the players and coaches, black and white, and then he shared a story that nobody outside that football team ever knew.

 This was in the spring of 1969, as the school district and the rest of Hope prepared for the transition year. Quietly, the two head football coaches at HHS and Yerger, Higgins and Tate, met and decided it would be smart to merge the two teams as soon as possible. So, one afternoon, the Hope football players gathered on the floor of Jones Field House for a typical offseason conditioning workout. A bus pulled up, and Yerger’s players walked into the gym.

 “We were all lined up, and all of a sudden here they came, down the steps, and lined up behind us,” Brown said. “We were all just standing there. Nobody knew what would happen next.”

 There had been no pep talk or advance notice from the coaches. But then, inside that silent gym, a player clapped his hands once. Then again. A few more began to clap. And soon, everyone was clapping, in total unison.

 “I’ll never forget that feeling,” Brown said.

 Because, from that moment, two teams became one. Months later, they would lead the way as two schools became one.

 We can’t let that memory slip away. In fact, this gives us a starting point for the Class of 1970’s next reunion, five years from now. We can have Ronny Brown, and any others who were part of it and have their own versions, stand up to resurrect more details of that fascinating story.

 And then everyone can clap in unison, one more time.

 Ralph Routon, a member of Hope High School’s Class of 1970, now is executive editor of the Colorado Springs Independent, an award-winning newspaper in Colorado Springs, Colo.

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