THE TIGER OAKS OF
LOGANSPORT HIGH SCHOOL
It is June
of 1948, and I am 8 years old and scared and excited. Our family has come to Logansport for the
first time. My Daddy (age 37) has
brought my brother Jacky (age 5) and I to see the school where he will be
Principal. In my mind’s eye, I can see
the three of us standing there under those two big oak trees, looking up at the
entrance to the school. It is the
biggest building I have ever seen, standing almost 3 stories (above-ground
basement, first and second floors). It
looks huge but beautiful. We walk down
the walk and up the big stairs. On the
second floor, across from Daddy’s office, we enter a classroom, and I stand on
a chair to look out the window. I am
looking out on the upper branches of the big oaks, and I think – “Oh my, we are as high as the trees.”
I learned
to ride my first bike on the sidewalk in front of those oaks, and in winter
when it snowed, we built a big snowman in the open area where the dark leafless
limbs cast their shadows. When we took
class pictures, we stood on those steps, and looked out at the oaks. Every day during the school semester, parents
waited under those trees for their children to emerge. In the summer, the snow-cone man would stop
his truck in front of the trees and all the children from the neighborhood
would congregate; and after he left, we would eat our sweet ice while sitting
on the roots of the big oaks. When
students misbehaved, Mr. Jackson made them clean up the school grounds, and
they all tried to clean the shaded area under the big oaks.
We made all kinds of pictures using
those oaks as our backdrop. The
cheerleaders posed there and the majorettes.
Our championship girls’ basketball team took pictures in our uniforms
standing with arms across our teammates shoulders. I have a picture standing between the trees
wearing my graduation gown, and a picture in the same spot three years later
wearing my wedding gown.
Those trees were home base when we
played tag, and the finish line for our races.
One night four of us sat under one of those trees crying our hearts out
because we lost the final game in the parish tournament by one point. On a fall night, after a football game, you
could see the moon shinning through the limbs of that oak, and many a kiss was
exchanged in the deep shadows.
This photo,
published on May 8, 1932, was taken after the dedication of the new school
building, and shows the two oaks as young saplings carefully planted and
supported. According to the accompanying
story, the trees were dedicated to the memory of the Logansport men who died in
WWI. Ninety years later, those oak trees
still stand, the only memorial to the Logansport veterans of the First World
War. For 67 years, those trees flanked the entry to LHS. That grand old school building has been gone for twenty-three years, but the oaks remain to
remind us of what once was and is no more.
