COLLEGE HIGH CLASS OF '46 HOLDS 50-YEAR REUNION THIS WEEKEND

Cape Girardeau County treasurer Bill Reynolds has fond memories of friendships formed at College High in the 1940s.

"We had mostly rural people as students," said Reynolds. "It was a small school with small classes and everyone got to know everyone. As a result, those friendships have lasted all these years."

Reynolds, who graduated from College High in Cape Girardeau in 1946, is meeting his classmates this weekend at Drury Lodge in Cape Girardeau for the 50th anniversary of their graduation. They will gather Friday at 6:30 p.m. for a mixer and again Saturday at 6:30 p.m. for a banquet.

Reynolds said that the class, which had 28 graduates, got together for their first reunion five years ago.

"My job at that reunion," said Reynolds, "was to stand at the door and direct classmates to the meeting room. The trouble was, they walked right by me because I didn't know them and they didn't know me."

College High had its last full graduation in 1986, by which time it was called University High. The school, which was a training lab for student teachers at Southeast Missouri State University (State Teachers College in 1946), was closed by the university administration due to changes in the university's educational training curriculum.

Reynolds said that College High was housed in what is now Crisp Hall on the Southeast campus, along with grades one through eight. "High school took up the third floor," he said.

At least 90 percent of the teaching, Reynolds said, was done by students from the college's teacher education departments.

"We had student teachers from the college," Reynolds said, "but they were working for a grade themselves and they had supervisors, so they always did a good job. It was a good academic school."

Two of Reynolds' classmates were Dorothy Brinkman and Loel Lowes, who were married June 1, 1946, and who still live in Cape Girardeau.

Dorothy Lowes said that the mostly rural students came in to College High on buses. She said they attended College High because the tuition was reasonable and "because the college students needed us to practice on."

One reason the tuition was so reasonable, Lowes thought, was that the College High students used the college facilities, such as the typing room, the gym, the swimming pool and Kent Library.

"We traveled from building to building like the college students did," said Lowes. "We also went to the college plays and to the college assemblies. The programs were always interesting."

Rural Jackson resident Viola (Koerber) Weiss, another '46 graduate, went to College High for four years, but prior to that had gone to the one-room Hanover Lutheran school, where grades one through eight, with about 30 total students, were all together.

The change from Hanover Lutheran to College High was dramatic for Weiss. "Oh, it was a big contrast for me," she said. "I was the only eighth grader (at Hanover) so I didn't know anybody in my class at College High. I was strictly on my own.

"But College High was a small school and you just made a lot of friends at that time. It was during the war and we didn't have everything we have now, but we were very close."

Weiss said that one of her major memories of College High was the basketball games. "Basketball was new to me," she said. "We got to go to the games, which were exciting."

Reynolds said that although College High had several extracurricular activities, notably glee club, drama and baseball, basketball was the major attraction. "We made our name in basketball," he said.

The 1945-46 team lost only two games during the regular season, Reynolds said, and finished fourth in the state tournament, at a time when schools were not divided into classifications based on enrollment. "The little boys played the big boys," Reynolds said. "We beat Springfield and Columbia before losing to St. Louis University High and then Waynesville."

Reynolds said that the 1945-46 team was the last from College High ever to appear in a state tournament. And, he said, that team inaugurated what is known today as the University High basketball tournament.

"We didn't have any outstanding stars," said Reynolds, who was one of 10 lettermen. "Our success was pretty much a team effort."

Three of the team members did, however, make the all-state team, Reynolds said. They were Harold Brinkopf, Forrest Crites and Roy Keller.

The College High class of 1946 will celebrate 50 years of such memories Friday and Saturday. "We'll have fun just sitting around and talking more than anything else," said Reynolds.