ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 8, 1996 TAG: 9606090044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALESSANDRA SOLER STAFF WRITER
BEFORE THE OLD SCHOOL, now Breckinridge Middle, is gutted and renovated, those who attended from 1933 to 1961 have a chance Sunday to walk through and reminisce about their high school days.
They're dubbed the William Fleming "Colonels," just like their younger counterparts at the high school on Ferncliff Avenue. But their hearts and memories lie elsewhere - in a Depression-era public school building that on July 15 will, in their eyes, be torn down forever.
Sunday, hundreds of Roanoke Valley residents who attended Breckinridge Middle School from 1933 through 1961 in its incarnation as the original William Fleming High School are expected to bring their letter jackets, yearbooks, awards and other memorabilia to the school cafeteria - once their auditorium and gymnasium - to walk through and reminisce about their high school days.
"This is the last chance we'll ever get to see the school as it was and show our grandchildren the primitive conditions we endured in high school," said Bill Ballentine, who attended Fleming from 1957 to 1961 and then graduated the following school year from the new campus off Hershberger Road. "Our lockers were the institutional colors - dark green and gray - but now they've got the MTV generation blue, red and orange lockers. All of that tradition is gone. We've thrown away history in the name of progress."
Breckinridge Middle School will be closed next year to undergo a complete $6 million makeover. Everything except for the historic facade, circular driveway and tree-lined entranceway will be torn down and renovated.
"The view of the school from Williamson Road will essentially remain unchanged," said architect Richard Rife, who was also responsible for the renovation of Jefferson High School into an office building and cultural center. Rife also said the classrooms on the left of the main entrance, added to the original building three years after it was built, will remain untouched.
Most of the faculty and staff at Breckinridge said improvements to the 64-year-old building are long overdue.
"It's desperately needed," Breckinridge principal Helen Townsend said. "The infrastructure, like the heating, water and electrical systems, are really on their last leg. We have burnouts and blowouts all the time, and the rest room facilities are just completely worn out; they're just not adequate for the present structure of the building."
The William Fleming alumni look at the reconstruction from a different perspective, however.
"They're tearing us down after many, many years and it's sad, you know," said Brintha Gibson, a member of the last class to graduate from William Fleming in 1961. "I drive by the school almost every day and there are a lot of memories there. I was a cheerleader, and my husband was a football player so it means a lot to us."
She and Wayne Gibson, her husband of 33 years, said they are looking forward to bringing some of their old high school photographs to the open house.
According to enrollment records at the Roanoke City school superintendent's office, 954 students were registered at William Fleming High School in 1961 - thethat last year before it was converted into a junior high. Of those students, 193 were graduating seniors.
After the high school moved to its new campus at 3649 Ferncliff Ave. N.W., enrollment was 1,100. Sue Brewer, a 1962 Fleming graduate, said she estimates that about half of those students came from the old campus.
"We had students from the old William Fleming, Jefferson and Patrick Henry high schools," she said. "And I don't think our graduating class was ever as close as all the classes before us partially because of that."
"There was never any incentive for us to have homecomings because there was nothing left for us to identify with," said Ballentine, who has lived in Roanoke for 40 years.
"Our school had a different name and we had a new building in a completely different neighborhood. We were literally sent out to the cornfields. The school was so close to the airport that they had to paint certain sections of the sidewalk black to make them less reflective."
The homecoming and walk-through will be Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. at Breckinridge Middle School, 3901 Williamson Road N.W. Roanoke city schools will provide light refreshments.
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. 1. Former students of the old Williamby CNBFleming High School - which is now Breckinridge Middle School - walk
through the hallway last week after a planning meeting for a Fleming
homecoming. color. 2. (headshot) Ballentine.