Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 8, 1993 TAG: 9310080177
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Students at Pulaski County High School covered 93 years in 20 minutes through a multimedia show that flashed pictorial highlights from this century onto three screens to a musical accompaniment.
It was followed by more slides and music featuring the school, which will be 20 years old by the end of the 1993-94 academic year. Visiting graduates and the general public saw the same program at the school Thursday night.
"Nine thousand graduates have gone out around the world, and for the past few weeks, I've been receiving letters from those graduates saying `I'm coming,' " said Principal Thomas DeBolt. Invitations to the show, and to tonight's homecoming football game, were mailed to the graduates at their last known addresses.
All the teachers and staff wore light gray T-shirts with the school's trademark Cougar on the back with the logo, "20 Years and Still Roaring." They will be wearing them again today.
Thirty-six faculty members have been at the school since it opened in 1974, including Assistant Principal Carl Lindstrom.
"It's hard for me to realize, but this group sitting in front of me this morning was not even born when plans were made for this school," he told the first of three student assemblies for the show.
"It was just an open field. That's all it was," Lindstrom recalled, when a group of citizens met in 1967 to plan a consolidated countywide school. "If we were trying to do it today, the cost would be in excess of $30 million," he said.
He credited Kenneth J. Dobson, who was superintendent at the time and the man for whom the Cougar sports stadium is named. "He is the man who had the dream to put this structure in place," Lindstrom said.
In 1969, a $6 million bond issue to build the school passed by about 400 votes. Ground was broken in 1972 and the doors opened two years later on seven acres under roof.
More than 53 percent of the school's graduates go on to college, Lindstrom said. "Do you all realize that in the last two years over $1 million has been awarded to Pulaski County High School students for scholarships?" he asked.
The show on the 20th century went from Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers through the Titanic, Prohibition, the Russian revolution, Babe Ruth's 60 homers, two world wars, the moon landing and Challenger disaster through Desert Storm.
There was some student applause over women getting the vote and some boos when atomic bombs destroyed two Japanese cities. Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe drew applause, too, but not as much as Martin Luther King Jr. or Elvis and the Beatles.
The multimedia presentation on the school drew enthusiastic responses as well, especially as the years - punctuated by the familiar sound of the school bell for changing classes - grew closer to the present and the student audience recognized more faces in the slides.
Cheers resounded over visual reminders that the school boasts the number one football team in Virginia, and took Virginia Honors Band awards for the last three years.
Lindstrom revealed that early plans for the school included a swimming pool. "Financially, that went down the drain," he said.
"It was an exciting time to move into this building," he said. "I'm just as excited now as I was 20 years ago."
by CNB