Gym was a 'honey;' memories sweet, too

The swings, slides, and teeter-totters on the Dora school playground in 1971 and 1972 provided front-row seats for the grandest construction project that my classmates and I had ever seen. 

While we chose up sides for recess games and eagerly implored "Red Rover, Red Rover" to send someone right over, we got to watch earth movers and cranes and bricklayers all hard at work on what would become our new gymnasium. 

 That building, officially named the Guy Luscombe Gymnasium more than 35 years ago in honor of its beloved longtime superintendent, has its 50th anniversary this year.  

In that half century, a lot of folks in eastern New Mexico have stepped through those doors, for all manner of events from games to tournaments to graduations to funerals. 

 Luscombe will turn 94 next month, but his stories of how this project came to be are as fresh as if they happened yesterday. 

A fortunate phone call

Oklahoma native Guy Luscombe came to Dora in 1962 as the newly hired principal for our small rural school district. 

But for a fortunate twist of fate (Dora Coyote fans might call it divine intervention), Luscombe - and in all likelihood that gymnasium - could have ended up in Floyd. 

You see, when Luscombe came for his interview at Dora, then Superintendent L.C. Cozzens asked him if he knew that Floyd's school had an open position as well, for a principal/coach combination.  

Luscombe, who had coaching experience, figured since he was in the area, he'd take a look. 

"Floyd offered me the job that day," Luscombe said, "but so did Dora."  

 The positions were similar, and he had good feelings about both districts. There was only one real difference.  

Like many schools at the time, Dora and Floyd both had "teacherages," nearby housing for faculty families. Luscombe and his wife, Polly, already had four of their five children and, Luscombe recalled, "the house at Floyd was a little bigger." 

"I started home and when I got to Portales, I decided to call Floyd and take the job," he said.  

He found a pay phone and called the school only to learn that the superintendent had left for the day. Making no commitment with the secretary, he decided to drive on home to Oklahoma where he told Polly the next day, "I'll go with whoever calls first." 

"Thirty minutes later, Dora called," Luscombe said. "Funny thing is, our phone had been out for two or three days." 

The growing phase

Luscombe said he borrowed $1,500 to make the move to New Mexico and came for a salary of "$6,500 plus freebies." 

He brought with him experience that would quickly prove invaluable. 

"At Waurika ... the last school where I was ... we had built a new high school and gymnasium in my second year," Luscombe said. "So, I knew the process." 

Dora was in a growing phase when the Luscombes arrived.  

A consolidation with the Rogers school had happened in time for the 1957-58 school year. With that consolidation came the school's current gymnasium, known to this day as the Rogers gym, a Quonset-style building that was moved across fields in one piece to Dora. 

 In 1962, according to the Portales News-Tribune, Dora completed a new $160,000 elementary building, followed two years later by a $420,000 building for its junior high and high school students. 

 Luscombe began his 25-year run as superintendent in 1965 when Cozzens took a job in Portales.  

By the end of the 1960s, the school started thinking about a new gymnasium. 

The Rogers gym, as old-timers will recall, was insulated with asbestos, and had a roof supported by columns that lined both sides of the playing floor. 

Over and above players colliding with those padded supports, "there was not a seat in there without a column in the way," Luscombe said. 

State champions

In 1970, a new coach named Jack Tarver led the Dora Coyote boys' basketball team to its first state championship. They claimed the Class AA title by beating Cimarron, brought home a shiny trophy, and "kind of set off a hope list," Luscombe said. 

With community spirits running high, the school put a $300,000 bond on the ballot in February of 1971. 

 "Dora voters marched to the poll 278 strong," the Portales News-Tribune reported. All but four of them marked a choice in the bond issue, passing it handily 166 to 108. 

And then some decisions had to be made. 

A dome or a pit

"First we wanted to build an aluminum dome," Luscombe recalled, prompting an initial visit with Butler Building in Lubbock, which was interested in attempting the job. 

This was only six years after Houston had opened its Astrodome - the first domed stadium in the world. 

"I took three board members with me to Houston," Luscombe said. "We looked at the Astrodome and several small domes in that area." 

Back home again, he said it quickly became clear that "this was such a new situation that the price was way beyond our limit." 

So instead of looking to build up, they turned their hopes earthward to explore the notion of beginning with a big hole in the ground. 

"The Pit was becoming famous in Albuquerque at that time," Luscombe said. "We wondered ... what would a small pit do?" 

An engineer from Butler speculated that his firm could build extra-wide trusses - long enough to span the length of a playing court and generous seating areas on both sides. The idea was to support the roof without a single one of those darned columns. 

Colton Construction won the bid to erect the new building, and Gene Collins was hired as the supervisor. 

Collins, who went on to oversee many High Plains projects including a major remodeling of the Eastern New Mexico University science building and the construction of the new Portales Junior High School, "deserves as much credit as anyone for the final building," Luscombe said. "I never met a finer man." 

A lot of help

Many other professionals with local roots played a role in the construction, Luscombe said, including Bruce and Rod McDermid of Portales, who were awarded the masonry contract, and Dora's Arthur King, who was hired as the electrician. 

 "We became our own contractors ... the school board did," Luscombe said. "We were able to limit prices and deal directly with everyone. The county treasurer's office was a great help ... Cleta Prude, Pauline Clark, Mrs. Justus. They were great at keeping our totals where they belonged." 

Luscombe's stories include dozens of names of people who played a role along the way.  

Bottom line? "We had a lot of help in that building," Luscombe said. 

Drilling for dry

Luscombe doesn't remember there being an official "ground-breaking" ceremony to kick off the gym construction.  

Instead, the ground was broken many times - 24, by his count - by a drilling truck poking holes to different depths to make sure that underground water would not be a problem for the new building, which would have a playing floor nine feet below the level of the lobby entrance. 

In what had to be one of the only eastern New Mexico water drilling projects where everyone was rooting for failure, there was good news: nary a drop dampened any of the two dozen test holes.  

Salty talk

Giant earth movers soon arrived, and the digging commenced. Construction took place over the next year or so - providing daily entertainment for us elementary kids who had recess on the playground just south of the project. 

Some days that "entertainment" was a little more than Luscombe thought was appropriate for our tender elementary ears. 

"McDermid's had the masonry contract," Luscombe remembered with a grin. "By about 9:30 every morning, the language was flying. I almost had to tell the teachers to not take the kids too close." 

I had to verify. I contacted Rod McDermid, who was in his early 20s on that project and who is still an active brick layer in eastern New Mexico. 

Guilty as charged. 

"They probably weren't good words," he said with a laugh. "That's the way we always were. It's always been that way. You smash the fool out of your thumb ... you're gonna say some words." 

But he has fond memories of the four months he estimates that he, his dad, and three other brick masons spent on the Dora gym.  

"That was a fun project," McDermid said. "It was a good project because Gene Collins was running it. Gene was a good one. It was well organized ... there were no problems ... everybody got along good." 

Luscombe never questioned the skill of his colorful bricklayers. 

"It looked great," he said, and thanks to the low profile of a pit-style building, "it was the same height as the rest of the school buildings, and it offered less of a wind problem." 

Burn, baby, burn

Old-timers like me will remember another unusual feature of our new gym: that memorable rubber floor. 

 "At that time, they were pushing artificial floors," Luscombe said. They were promoted as being less expensive than wood and more multi-purpose. 

Dora finally opted to install a flooring called "Robbins Sports Tread," described in a News-Tribune article as "a new innovation in gymnasium floors" and "a washable material resembling soft stucco." 

Less expensive and washable? Yes.  

But all of us who ever played on that floor remember what first year-coach Dale Severson told the News-Tribune in November of 1972 when the gym opened: "You definitely come to a stop on this floor." 

If only your feet stopped and you kept going (as happened regularly to the best of us), you could count on one heck of a "burn" on any exposed skin as you skidded to a halt.  

Trailers to the rescue 

The gymnasium's legendary "theater style" seats were not in the original plan, Luscombe told me. I even learned of a family connection to how they ended up in Dora. 

Luscombe said the original plans called for concrete bleachers to be built on the edges of the pit, but the Tower Theater in Portales was coincidentally undergoing a complete renovation in 1971. 

Luscombe remembers that Jim Williamson - my dad and a newly elected school board member - called him one Sunday morning and told him that the school could get old theater seats for a song.  

Luscombe remembers the price being a buck a chair; the News-Tribune says twice that. Either way, there was a catch. 

The chairs had to be moved pronto. 

"I called Junior Gresham," Luscombe said. "I said we need somebody to haul the seats from the Tower. He asked, 'How many?' I said, 'A lot.' Directly he came by with a trailer, then here came another trailer ... and another. By mid-afternoon all of the chairs were in Dora ... more than 500 of them." 

A cheerleader challenge

In one of the slyest labor contracts every negotiated, the six varsity cheerleaders (seniors Nelda Duncan and Janet Rice, junior Varda Radcliff, and sophomores Trish Fenton, Ella Raye Lovejoy, and Sharon Luscombe) were persuaded to take on the task of recovering all of those heavily used chairs as the summer project from ... well, you know. 

Their payoff was a week at a cheerleading camp at ENMU the summer of 1972, and new uniforms for the 1972-73 school year. 

To this day, Trish Fenton says it was one of the hardest jobs she ever had - ripping off fabric from an unending pile of chairs, adding new stuffing, cutting out replacement fabric (deep red "Hylon" ordered by the bolt from a company in Denver), and stapling it to each seat and back. 

 "Our fingers were rubbed raw," she recalled. 

Head cheerleader Nelda Duncan, now Nelda Massey of Roswell, agreed. "I do have such memories of working on those chairs, but I've always been pretty proud of that job. I still look at them and think, 'We did that.'"  

Finished cost per chair was $7 - a bargain even for 1972, cheerleader blood and all. 

Slopes and levels

An unexpected obstacle arose when it came time to install the refurbished seats onto the concrete risers. Theater seats are designed to allow patrons to sit level, but they're on a floor that slopes down to a screen. The already-poured gymnasium risers were level to begin with. 

Longtime school bus contractor Alan Burkett and his neighbor, Glyn Gresham, "said they could build a brace and straighten the seats," Luscombe said. "We hired them and Gerald Mitchell to do them all." 

The refinished chairs – 575 of them by the Portales News-Tribune count or possibly thousands, if you asked the cheerleaders - were installed on the entire north side of the seating area and in the middle of the south side, leaving two sections of open "bleachers," which were covered with red indoor/outdoor carpeting. 

A consolidation consolation

The finishing touches were put on the gymnasium in the fall of 1972, which was - also quite by chance - the semester when Causey school students first came to Dora following a consolidation ordered by the New Mexico Public Education Department. 

Luscombe said the gymnasium was already under construction when the consolidation wheels started rolling, so there was no connection between the two events. 

Still, having a brand spanking new gymnasium offered a pleasant distraction for all as the two districts merged. 

For the record: That $300,000 bond passed by the Dora school district voters remained a burden only on the Dora district, even after the consolidation, according to News-Tribune accounts. 

Open for business

The first official event in the new facility was a multi-day junior college basketball tournament held in November of 1972, with varsity teams from New Mexico Junior College and New Mexico Military Institute, and the junior varsity squads from Lubbock Christian College and Wayland Baptist University. 

A personal draw for local crowds - besides the chance to see the inside of the new gymnasium - was the LCC Chaparral team. It was coached by Dora native Larry Hays, and featured 1971 Causey graduate Rodney Gardner and 1972 Dora graduate Randy Evans. 

News-Tribune editor Gordon Greaves attended the game and wrote about it in his "By The Way" column the following day, noting that a good harvest season crowd was on hand, "despite the crush of grain combining." 

The first Dora Consolidated School games were played in the new gym on Nov. 20, 1972. The News-Tribune reported only on a boys' game, noting that the Coyotes squeaked past the visiting Farwell Steers, 39-37. Jimmy Duncan was the high scorer for the Coyotes with 10 points; Leslie Tollett, Joe Luman, and Gordon Fraze had six each in the effort. 

Time out

A coach's office with a one-way glass window overlooking the floor was an addition that ended up with a slightly different use than first planned, Luscombe said. 

Designed to let a coach take a phone call or take care of business while still keeping an eye on the gym, it ended up regularly serving as a "time out" corner for coaches who were evicted from games on technical fouls, Luscombe said. 

Luscombe mentioned two area coaches who had an informal ongoing competition for most time spent in the time-out office, but I'm far too diplomatic to spill those names. Suffice it to say the office was regularly used in those early years. 

A new floor ... or two

Removal of that skin-scrubbing rubber floor was the first major change made after construction. It was replaced by a traditional maple floor in the summer of 1979 for a cost of $25,000, according to the Portales News-Tribune. 

Luscombe said much of the rubber was carved into pieces to line the floors of local stock trailers.  

"It didn't go to waste," he assured me. "I wonder if there is any of it still around?" 

Unfortunately, the pristine replacement floor only got to see a few seasons of use before a couple of toilets backed up on a Saturday in March of 1983 on a day the track teams had gone to a meet.  

When the Dora activity bus rolled back in that evening, "water was discovered cascading down the steps to the gym floor," according to the Portales News-Tribune. "The teams, along with townspeople, spent two hours carrying buckets of water off the floor." 

The damage had already been done, and a new floor was installed for the fall of 1983. 

The end of an era

Although most of us still call this 50-year-old building the "new gym" (even current students and staff, according to Dora's Superintendent Brandon Hays), the facility was formally named the Guy Luscombe Gymnasium by the Dora Student Council in 1986. 

Luscombe retired in 1990, the senior superintendent in the state of New Mexico at the time. He was honored by many throughout the state for a career that always - always - put students first.  

"In small school districts across New Mexico, [Luscombe] is known as one of the state's strongest and best advocates of strong rural education," the Portales News-Tribune wrote in a retirement tribute. 

Alan Morgan, New Mexico State School superintendent in 1990, told the newspaper, "I feel like we're losing the dean of superintendents in New Mexico. When Guy talks, people really do tend to listen." 

A work in progress 

The Luscombe Gym has seen a number of changes from 1972, besides those two replacement floors. 

A massive mural of a snarling coyote was added to the south inside wall in 1981, a student project coordinated and led by a visiting "artist in the school," Luscombe said. 

Sometime in the late 1980s (there is an ongoing debate about the year), a dining area with tables and chairs was added to the lobby, allowing fans to sit down to eat those tasty Frito pies from the nearby concession stand. 

 A few years ago, a number of those cheerleader-refurbished chairs finally wore out and were replaced by new black seats with cupholders.  

In a great nod to tradition, the new chairs had also once been used by the Tower Theater. They were removed when it was sold and renovated into the current Loft Apartments.  

Good news for the current cheerleaders: No re-upholstery was required. 

A honey of a gym

I visited the school and gymnasium last week.  

The playground looks nothing like the one where we survived spine-jarring sessions on the old teeter-totters while being awed by the mountain of dirt growing to our north as the pit was dug that would soon nestle our gymnasium. 

The exterior of the gym is as pristine as the day it opened - the blonde bricks not showing even a whisp of telltale age.  

Inside, by my count, 204 of the red chairs are still in service, joined by 360 of the newer black ones.  

The steps now sport gray carpet, and the playing floor sparkles with new varnish, fresh paint, and updated graphics after a facelift that took place last summer. 

But there are some things that haven't changed a bit since Portales News-Tribune sports editor Ron Ennis wrote in 1972, "Many larger communities would be envious of this Dora gym. It's a honey." 

And that man it's named for - Guy Luscombe - well, I'll give you my word: He's a honey, too. 

Betty Williamson has loved every step of this journey. Reach her at:

[email protected]