Truckin' on the Western Branch

Dr. Susan S. Bechtol, Principal, Churchland High School. Image by Sheally

Current Churchland High School on Cedar Lane. Image by Sheally

In those early days, girls’ sports lacked status and their second-class category was prevalent at most schools at the time.

Girls’ sports were OK as long as we didn’t interfere with the boys, VanDyck said. We’d play anybody who would give us a game. Team buses were available only if the boys were not using them, so often a few parents and I drove the female athletes to their games.

I sponsored the cheerleaders too. I couldn’t do a cheer if I had to, but I made sure they all came to practice.

In those days we had proms in the gym, Homecoming parades and girls wearing skirts not jeans. I started a May Day celebration with each class preparing a dance performance, complete with costumes. There was a May Pole dance and a king, queen and a court. It grew into a community celebration.

In 1954 a new Churchland High School, grades nine to twelve, opened on High Street West and expanded four years later. The old Academy building was used as an elementary school, and as a junior high for three years after the annexation until it was torn down in 1987.

Anita Forbes Martin grew up in Sterling Point and graduated from Churchland High in 1962.

I remember the May Day celebrations from the time I was in fifth grade. Gracie Lee organized it all, and the whole school was involved. My sister-in-law, Charlotte Martin Fletcher, was the May Queen in 1953. Freddy Fletcher, her future husband, played Robin Hood, and her brother, my husband, Floyd Buddy Martin, was the court jester.

Carolyn Honeycutt remembered that the May King was John Mintz, and he rode a white horse to crown Queen Charlotte.

The current Churchland Elementary School opened in 1958 on Michael Lane.

Smokey Glover remembered that Garfield Shafer, the first principal at the new Churchland Elementary, rescued him from a difficult second grade.

“Garfield Shafer was the principal’s principal,” Glover said. “I cried every day on my way to the school bus. A neighbor walked with me because my mother couldn’t stand my crying when she didn’t know why.”

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