Group's Web site chronicles Illinois' lost high schools

MINERAL, Ill. -- The glory days are long gone for hundreds of small Illinois school districts lost to consolidation over the past 50 years, but stories and pictures about bygone high schools in the state, including many local former schools, have found a home online.

The Web site Illinois High School Glory Days, www.illinoishsglorydays.com, features information on more than 500 Illinois high schools that no longer exist, including consolidated public schools and defunct private schools.

Each school has its own page, often incorporating glimpses of the towns where the schools were once in session and of the students who walked through the halls. For some schools, there are also insights into what the curriculum was like and details about athletic accomplishments.

"Especially in smaller towns, the high school was really the focus and the heartbeat of the town," said Dave Nanninga, creator of the Web site. "This is a way to bring some pride back to those towns."

Nanninga grew up in Mineral, in Bureau County. He attended Annawan High School, but always heard stories from relatives about Mineral High School, which was consolidated to Annawan in 1961, the year before he was born. The building was later used as an elementary school and closed permanently in 1974. But Nanninga remembers the bell, set on a timer, that still rang in the empty school for several years after it closed. That sound, along with a feeling of sadness that there would never be a high school in town again, stayed with him.

Nanninga launched the Web site in February 2005 and now gets about 100 daily visitors who look at an average of 10 pages within the site each visit. Readers are encouraged to submit information, personal memories and photographs to supplement the basic facts Nanninga and a group of friends have gathered from the Illinois High School Association and other sources.

"I really like the personal memories," he said.

For Maquon native Denis Shenaut, who now lives in Rockwall, Texas, the Web site is a way to remember where he's from and to learn more about what his parents' lives were like. Shenaut stumbled across the Web site after searching for information about small towns in the area. He has contributed photos and information about several deactivated high schools in Knox and Fulton counties.

Nanninga said the majority of people who submit the information are people who attended high school in the 1940s and 1950s, but he hears from people from later generations as well. He said it's not just alumni who submit the information, but coaches, family members and local historians as well.

Nanninga funds the site out of his own pocket and intends to keep it that way.

"Some people golf or whatever," he said. "This is my hobby."