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Forever South
In 1968, South High School graduated
its last class. Thirty-five years following the
controversial shutdown decision, former students
reflect on the distinct, permeative South High experience.
By Curt Wozniak
William Kilgore’s South High
School classmates remember him as a quiet leader
— hence the nickname “Sir William.”
“He didn’t
always have a lot to say,” recalled
Janice Noel, who graduated with Kilgore from
South in 1968, “but when he spoke, people
listened.” To find out why, see Kilgore’s
response to the broad, open-ended question:
“What was it like to be part of South’s
last graduating class at a time when the nation
was changing so much?” Kilgore, who
works as a production tech with GM, responded
simply, eloquently: “It was like a gap
in time.”
Kilgore confessed he didn’t coin that
phrase. “This was something I could
relate to, an idea based on the healing of
the country during that time,” he said.
But it certainly works well to sum up a decade
of social change capped off by one of the
most controversial decisions the Grand Rapids
Board of Education ever made. |
“It was like a
gap in time” to be part of
South’s last graduating class at a
time when
the nation was changing so much.
— William Kilgore
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The pep rallies and football games
from the fall of 1967 easily could have been overshadowed
by the Tet offensive in Vietnam, launched in January
of ’68, and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. in April. The exhilaration of graduation
could have been cut short by a summer marked by
Robert Kennedy’s assassination and the riots
at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
But when members of South High’s class of
’68 (and their adopted classmates from ’69)
get together — as they will Aug. 8 and 9 for
their 35th reunion — their repartee doesn’t
sound like an American history lecture. They sound
like 17-year-olds again …
Hanging out at Joppe’s …
Eating onion burgers at Friendly’s …
Stocking up on butterscotch Lifesavers (or Mars
bars, if you happen to be soul singer and former
South Trojan, Al Green) at the school store …
And they reminisce about an educational experience
that a dozen sparkling new West Side schools couldn’t
touch.
* * *
In the 1930s, South became the crown jewel of Grand
Rapids Public Schools, turning out exceptional graduates
and counting Gerald Ford among its alumni. Boasting
an excellent faculty, a diverse student body and
successful athletic teams, South was “it,”
recalled Noel, the Grand Rapids Public Library children’s
specialist known as “Miss Janice” to
thousands of young library patrons. “Growing
up as children, that was the school you wanted to
go to,” she added.
By the 1960s, Grand Rapids was tightly segregated
residentially, with most of GR’s African-American
population falling into the South High district.
According to 1968 newspaper accounts, Superintendent
Jay L. Pylman and the board hoped that closing South
as a high school and busing its students, 58 percent
of whom were African-American, to the city’s
remaining high schools would foster a new era of
integration. While the merit of this decision —
which closed the only truly integrated high school
in the city at the time — has been debated
for decades, its effects are pretty clear.
To South High alumni, taking away their alma mater
helped strengthen an already special bond. To the
South High neighborhood, closing the neighborhood
school inflicted deep wounds that are still not
fully healed. And to members of South’s “lost
classes,” finishing high school at another
school instead of graduating in the navy blue and
red of South High meant unrest, riots and police-escorted
buses reminiscent of Little Rock in 1957.
* * *
Deborah Jones jokes that she’s led a nomadic
life since graduating from South in 1968. Today
she’s back home in Grand Rapids, working as
a district trainer for Home Depot, but that is a
fairly recent development. Jones spent the past
seven years working as a writer and public speaker
in Atlanta, and the previous 13 in California. Just
because it meant traveling from far-flung regions
of the country, however, don’t think Jones
ever used distance as an excuse to miss a class
reunion. In fact, Jones kept her South High affiliation
close to her heart, even in the most unlikely places.
“There was just
this camaraderie
that we had as students
that still remained in our adult lives.”
— Deborah Jones
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The year was
1996. Jones had just moved to Atlanta. She
was still settling into the area and had not
yet met many people. That fact made the strong
sense of recognition that came over her one
day in the Laundromat feel even more out of
place. Then it hit her.
“Didn’t you go to South High
School?” Jones asked a woman who was
folding clothes nearby.
Incredulously, the woman answered, “Yes.”
And even though she graduated six years ahead
of Jones, even though their only real connection
was through Jones’ older cousins’
South yearbooks, the two women clicked. |
“The thing was, the link was not, ‘Are
you from Grand Rapids?’” Jones recalled.
“To me, the link that was more important was
that we were both from South.”
Jones says the pride she feels for her high school
has not faded. When pressed that it might have something
to do with her status as a member of South’s
last graduating class, she disagrees. “It’s
not just from my graduating year; I’m talking
about people that I’ve run into in the years
since I’ve been out of school that talk about
that same thing,” she said. “There was
just this camaraderie that we had as students that
still remained in our adult lives.”
Sharon Boles concurs. An alumna from the class
of ’62, Boles (née Sharon Reidmiller)
is a membership/claims specialist for the Mental
Health & Recovery Services Board in Zanesville,
Ohio. And while she shares Jones’ sense of
nostalgia for her high school days, she attributes
it to the unique mix of coming of age in the 1960s
and coming of age at South. “I feel that students
no longer have such a strong bond today,”
Boles said. “My brothers and sisters that
did not get to go to South missed a sense of oneness
that’s been fading with each passing year.”
| That’s not
all that has been fading in the old South High
neighborhood. Melvin Atkins, longtime Grand
Rapids educator and current GRPS executive director
of activities and services, said the South High
neighborhood is still getting over the school’s
closure. “It really affected the community,”
said Atkins, who graduated from South in 1968.
“Working in the school system for as long
as I have, I can say that it really took years
for kids who live in that neighborhood to regain
their self-esteem.” |
“It really took
years for kids
who live in that neighborhood
to regain their self-esteem.”
— Melvin Atkins
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* * *
Rarities collectors swarm online swap shops for
anomalies with the intensity of the magazine editor
who scanned this page for typos. To these folks,
a mint-condition front page from the Nov. 3, 1948,
Chicago Daily Tribune, with its infamous “Dewey
Defeats Truman” headline, would be worth a
small fortune.
But for Monique Marie Ciofu (née Timmer),
her South High ’69 class ring would be worth
a lot more if there were less novelty attached to
it and more truth.
After South closed, Ciofu was bused to Union High
School, where she graduated in 1969. She purchased
her class ring during her junior year, before the
board of education announced its master plan. “So
there I was, with my most prized and expensive possession:
a memento from a school that didn’t exist
anymore,” Ciofu said sadly.
Ciofu recalled not being able to afford another
class ring after switching schools, but as she reminisced
about her senior year at Union, it became clear
that such a token would hardly be cherished as much
as her ring from South.
“My senior year was a disaster,” Ciofu
said. “It was difficult trying to make friends
and participate in school events when you lived
clear on the other side of town.”
Ciofu’s story is shared by many members of
South’s “lost classes” (’69-’71).
For her African-American classmates, the picture
was even bleaker. Kathy A. Bracey was also bused
to Union, where she graduated in 1969. Today, Bracey
is a GRPS reading specialist and a 28-year teaching
veteran, but she admits that it took her 20 years
before she could step inside Union again after graduation.
She describes her year there, characterized by riots
that started the first week of school, as “horrible.”
“My first year at Union was the first time
in my life that I had ever been ashamed of being
white,” said Terri T. Mileski (née
Timmer), Ciofu’s younger sister. Mileski graduated
from Union in 1970; today she’s a teacher
in Escanaba.
Mileski continued, “African-American kids
I had known since kindergarten were all of a sudden
being treated as if they were monsters from another
planet. The hatred expressed by many of the white
students and adults was reprehensible.”
* * *
While it would be a hard case to make that South
High was a utopia through the late 1960s, it generally
was free of the kind of racial tensions that existed
elsewhere in Grand Rapids — and around the
nation — at the time. It was certainly free
from the types of large-scale riots that took place
at Union in the fall of 1968. If you were there,
you know the reason why.
“Kids at South were unique because of the
fact that we had a variety of white and black exposure
coming into our lives at the time,” William
Kilgore mused. “It’s all about exposure.
That’s how you learn how to treat people.”
And when the official news (rumors had circulated
as early as Kilgore’s junior year) of South’s
demise was announced to students in the spring of
’68, it galvanized white and black students
alike.
“White kids fought just as hard to save the
school,” Janice Noel recalled. “It brought
us closer together.”
Ultimately, efforts to save the high school failed
and South was converted into a middle school for
the 1968-’69 school year. It functioned in
that capacity until 1979. Today, the building still
stands on Hall Street SE just a block off South
Division Avenue. It has housed the Grand Rapids
Job Corps Center since the early 1980s.
But to alumni, it will always be South High School.
“We’ll always have a lot of memories
because we still see that building standing there,”
Marge Wilson said. “To this day I still say
‘Why?’ I just keep thinking, why aren’t
other kids being given the same opportunities we
had?”
Wilson, known to fellow members of the South High
class of ’57 as Marge Winters, owns Marge’s
Donut Den, 1751 28th St. SW. Members of the South
High Varsity Club still meet regularly at her shop.
“Most people look back at their high school
years and either dwell on the negative or make it
seem better than it really was,” Terri Mileski
added. “South High was cool. Any memory I
have doesn’t have to be improved upon with
time, and anything negative that happened has faded
away because it was insignificant to the whole South
High experience.” GR
Curt Wozniak is the Grand Rapids Magazine staff
writer.
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