Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Mykell Jackman Brewer, a Clovis High School graduate who now lives in Virginia, wrote recently to report the CHS class of 1959 will hold its 45th reunion at the Downtown Sheraton Hotel in Albuquerque, Sept. 17-19.
She was looking for any good stories that I might know from that era.
I never went to the new Clovis High School, which opened in 1956 at 21st and Thornton.
I graduated in 1950 from the old high school where Clovis-Carver Public Library is now located at Seventh and Main.
Some of us cried when they tore down our old high school.
I do recall a tragic accident at the new high school when it first opened. A student, Darlene Nolen, was so excited about the new school that she ran across the lobby, intending to go out the west door, and ran through the big plate glass window instead. She suffered a severe cut on her arm and leg and nearly bled to death. Fortunately, she did survive. Her mother still lives in Clovis.
One incident that occurred in the class of ’59s junior year was the “walkout” of nearly the whole class. One class member, Jon Pressley, said it was caused by “bad blood” between class members and an assistant principal. I have never learned exactly why the students were unhappy with the assistant principal. I do know that Gary Bennett borrowed one of his Dad’s big moving trucks and loaded up his unhappy classmates to parade up and down Main Street. They also went out to Hillcrest Park, and who knows where else, protesting their unhappiness.
Everyone that walked out of school that day was expelled from school the next day. They had to bring their parents to school so they could be reinstated. A big percent of the class took part in that walkout I was told.
A rather funny incident occurred one evening in the fall of that year when three students, all boys, were dragging Main and two decided it was their destiny to hop a freight train in the railroad yards of Clovis and ride all the way to Texico. The third boy, in his automobile, would follow the train to Texico and bring the boys back.
Well, the train did not stop in Texico like the two boys had figured. They clung to the ladder on one of the freight cars all the way to Amarillo. One said they nearly froze their hands off. Their parents had to go to Amarillo and bring those two boys back, arriving back in Clovis after midnight.
Such were the lives of some of the students from the Class of 1959.
For information about the reunion, Brewer can be contacted at:
Don McAlavy is Curry County’s historian. He can be contacted through this newspaper at:
