High school; yes, those were the days. For most of us, memories of this time in our life were captured in the yearbooks that we scurried around on the last day of school to secure autographs of our classmates and teachers. Today, most of these receptacles of our “precious memories” sit in a box on the floor of a closet or attic, or they have been cast off to the Goodwill.
I recently attended my 55th class reunion and among the items (relics) sitting on a “table of memories” was a yellowed copy of our school newspaper, the Howe Tower. Turning through the four pages of Vol. 25, No. 37, May 31, 1963 of this weekly paper, the stories were of senior class activities and honor and awards received by those graduating; a humorous recollection of “Memories of a Locker Ant”; an article of faculty summer plans; and accounts of the Howe track team’s “impressive” record and the varsity baseball team’s 10-4 record. Also, this little number contained ads for some of a graduating teens’ favorite haunts — Buckley’s Bradley Barbecue, Pasquale’s Pizza, and Wolman Drugs. I soon realized that this little weekly paper, together with the others proceeding during my high school years, contained more memories than those highlighted in the annual yearbook, the Hilltopper. Sadly, I suspect, few Towers were squirreled away after their first reading and this weekly diary of high school years would be lost if it was not for the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library digitizing the Towers held in the collection of the Irvington Historical Society.
The first official Indianapolis high school newspaper made its debut early in 1895. The Mind and Hand, a monthly issued by the students of the Industrial Training School (Manual High School) was an account of school life and contained prose and poetry, along with art work, and was deemed “a very creditable periodical.” The name changed to the Item and later the Mirror which was issued as a semi-monthly with bright, newsy articles. A final masthead change appeared on March 19, 1912 with the introduction of the Booster.
In the fall of 1896, Shortridge High School seniors Sampsel W. Mansfield and Lawrence B. Davis published the Silent Spectator, a four-page paper appearing fortnightly and giving school news on students’ clubs, class organizations, athletic scores, “and a score of other topics dear to the undergraduate heart.” The following school-year, the paper was renamed the Comet, a sometimes weekly. Although the Comet was short lived, student interest in a school newspaper persisted and their desires were met when the first issue of the Daily Echo came off the presses on Monday, September 26, 1898.
Arsenal Technical (Tech) High School became the third Indianapolis city high school when it opened in 1912, and two years later the school newspaper, the Arsenal Cannon, began being distributed bi-weekly to the students. In the ensuing years, additional high schools were built to serve a growing teenage population and enthusiastic student journalists left their bylines across the pages of the Broad Ripple Riparian, the Attucks Flyer, the Washington Surveyor, the Howe Tower, the Wood Megaphone, the Arlington Lancer, the Marshall Liberator, and the Northwest Telstar.
Student newspapers in the Marion County township high schools began on November 7, 1924 with the first issue of the Warren Central Owl. The four-page paper was a tri-weekly carrying news, features, an occasional cartoon, editorials, department notes, and items from the township grade schools. Warren Central High School journalism teacher Margaret B. Hecker, the daughter of Irvington printer Edward Hecker and a former editor of the Shortridge Echo and staff member of the Butler Collegian and the Indiana University Daily Student, founded the Owl with students in her class writing articles as classroom lessons. Other township high schools followed with the Ben Davis Spotlight, the Decatur Central Clarian, the Franklin Central Pilot, the Lawrence Central Cub Reporter, the North Central Northern Lights, the Pike Hi-Life, and the Southport Journal. Two suburban Indianapolis municipalities with high schools also provided reportorial student opportunities on the pages of the Speedway Speedette and the Beech Grove Hornet.
While Marion County parochial high school students also exercised their journalistic skills on the pages of the Brebreuf Arrow; the Cathedral Megaphone; the Chatard Trojan Shield; the Scecina Crusader; the Latin School Twin Towers; the Roncalli Rebel Review; the St. Agnes Audiophone; the St. John Set Up; and the St. Mary Crosier, the Golden Age of Indianapolis area high school journalism can be summed up in three words — The Teen Star. Beginning Saturday, February 4, 1956 and continuing each Saturday for almost two decades, the Indianapolis Star provided an eight to twelve-page insert with the regular daily paper where articles submitted by student correspondents relayed news from their high schools. “[It] was a means of communication between students from different schools,” lamented several Manual High School students as they observed on the passing of the Teen Star, “[It] was the only section of the newspaper containing good news, with the exception of the comic page.”
Indianapolis high school journalists and their newspapers were recognized over the years for their excellence by Quill & Scroll, the international high school journalism honor society. While these accolades were well deserved, the greater tribute to the skills honed by these student scribes under the guidance of their faculty advisers were those of their number who went on to make journalism a career, adhering to the Five Ws — Who-What-Where-When-Why – and factual reporting the news to the public.
If among your treasured items from high school is a copy or two or your school paper, take it out of the box and re-read its columns. Once again relive a time when a few of your fellow classmates — friends — recorded the good news of the “best time of our lives” and maybe share a story or two at your next class reunion.
