Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 20, 1994                   TAG: 9410210018
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

THE WAY IT WAS MEETS THE WAY IT IS

"We'd come in in the morning and sit on the steps here and gossip," recalled Tibby Martin, sitting under the 1923 entranceway light - the only original fixture left in Jefferson High School that wasn't damaged by vandals or worn out by the years.

"We didn't even know that fancy light was up there, we were so interested in what dress so-and-so had on."

So the stories will go this weekend, when Jefferson's Class of '39 reconvenes for its 55th reunion, the first class reunion in the renovated school that now houses arts, school and community-service groups.

It's a fitting first, considering that retired judge Beverly Fitzpatrick wasn't just the '39 class president, he's also been the catalyst behind the school's metamorphosis. Open now for a year, the Jefferson Center had become a boarded-up haven for pigeons, vagrants and rats before an alumni group launched its resurrection in 1989.

Last week, the judge showed off the new digs to his reunion-committee cohorts, stopping to straighten a lamp shade in the foyer and relishing every detail of the project:

The city's Office on Youth and Grants Compliances? That was the principal's office back in '39. "The truant officer used to sit on yonder," the judge recalled.

The Head Start day-care program? That housed the home-ec kitchen and classrooms. "We used to break in there after basketball games and eat pies," said retired dentist Bill Williams, a forward on the team.

And the old gym behind the auditorium, where the Mental Health Association will house its annual Festival of Trees fund-raiser this Christmas? "Don't remind me," moaned Tibby Martin.

"We used to get doctors' excuses to keep us from having to do P.E. - especially the seniors. There was one doctor in town all the girls went to, and he'd write that you suffered from low blood pressure."

1938-1939. The school year in which first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Roanoke, when Orson Welles scared the country with his Martian-invasion story, when the school's spring play was "Ebony Escapes of 1939: A Hilarious Black-face Minstrel."

The school newspaper, The Jefferson News, documented the year with surprising aplomb. "Several gals are mighty interested in Bev Fitzpatrick, and he's having a time choosing, since all of them seem to be blondes," wrote the writer of Hi-Lights, a school gossip column.

In a column called "I. Quizzem?" junior Marshall Fishwick, now a Virginia Tech professor, penned such fashion-writer-like prose as: "It's here! Those dreamy looks, new clothes and blank expressions can only mean one thing - spring!"

A story about a new, cutting-edge course called driver education noted that "a special street in Roanoke has been designated in which the students practice the fundamentals of driving."

In an editorial lambasting the city's refusal to extend funding to the school's industrial-arts department, a writer opined: "The crying need of the world today is for farmers, mechanics and artisans, and Roanoke offers its youth no adequate training of this sort. She has mocked, by belittling their importance, the industries by which her present citizens exist."

It was a time when seniors sold elevator passes to freshmen for 5 cents (though the renovated center has an elevator now, it didn't then).

A time when study-hall cut-ups rolled marbles down the sloped auditorium, letting them clang against metal chair legs so they'd "sound like a pinball machine," Fitzpatrick recalled.

In its heyday, the 900-seat school auditorium welcomed such entertainers as Leonard Bernstein, Guy Lombardo and Sammy Kaye.

Restoration of it will cost $3 million, which the foundation hopes to begin raising next year. The foundation has already spent $5.5 million in renovations, including $3.5 million from taxpayers and almost $2 million from individuals and corporations.

"The auditorium is gonna be the real jewel," Fitzpatrick promised, describing chandeliers and opera boxes. "It will be the only mid-sized auditorium in Roanoke, perfect for housing the opera, and it should attract a lot of road shows. The acoustics here are outstanding."

Fitzpatrick, 75, said he wasn't sure he'd live to see the re-opening of the auditorium, where he first stepped foot as a Forest Park School sixth-grader in a school play. "My three words were `Here comes Washington.' That's all I had to say, and I was scared out of my wits."

"Can you imagine that?" he joked to his former classmates. "I gave speeches here in the '60s and '70s."

The class of '39 spawned such leaders as newspaper publisher Barton Morris, Judge Ernest Ballou, retailer Sig Davidson, Air Force Gen. Ralph Saunders and civic leader Rosalie Krisch Shaftman.

"We were really a close class because of the times," Martin said. "We were just getting over the Depression and the war was coming, and we knew it. And we continue to be close because we lost so many of our friends in the war."

Asked if Saturday's reunion festivities will harken to the old all-night dances at Lakeside, she said, "Lord no. if we're still up to 11:30, we'll be lucky."

Tours of the Jefferson Center are available by calling 343-2624 weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.