Fayetteville-Manlius District Office8199 East Seneca Turnpike Manlius, NY 13104
Historical Perspective
by Platt Wheeler
(The following is a narrative recollection by Platt Wheeler, former teacher and assistant principal at F-M High School from 1948 - 1983.)
To begin with, I came to Fayetteville High School to teach American History and coach in September of 1948. In 1950, there were separate schools, and I'm giving you a little background here because there are some circumstances later where this information would be helpful. In Manlius, there was a K-12; in Jamesville, there was a K-12; in Fayetteville, there was a K-12; in DeWitt, there was a K-6 at Moses DeWitt only. DeWitt had no high school and most of the students in DeWitt came to the Fayetteville High School on tuition payments by the DeWitt District. A few went to Nottingham on the east side of the city. The old Nottingham, not the one on Genesee Street now.
When I was recalled in December of 1950, the conversation concerned centralization and it centered primarily around Fayetteville and DeWitt as a centralization. Manlius and Jamesville were considered different types than Fayetteville-DeWitt and under the state's master plan they were to go together. The state at the time had a master plan which called for primary centralizations and then secondary centralizations where small centralizations would ultimately recentralize again. I can cite a specific example for you. Georgetown, for example, was centralized and so was South Otselic later centralized to become Otselic Valley Central School. There was no conversation at that time that I am aware of about Fayetteville and Manlius centralizing.
When I returned to teach in September of 1952, the F-M centralization had occurred as a legal fact. As far as I remember, a single Board of Education existed and the district office was located in a house on, I think, Spring Street in Fayetteville. I'm not sure which street, but one of those connecting Franklin and Genesee Street. Ray Van Giesen would know. The only evidence that centralization had occurred was the existence of a bus system and a district administrative setup. For the school year 1952-53, both Manlius and Fayetteville operated as in the past, K-12. Ray Van Giesen was the Superintendent and Merrill Lewis, who had been the principal at Manlius became the High School Principal for both setups. Chet Griffin, who had been the vice principal at Fayetteville, was assigned as vice principal in charge of the Manlius building, and Ed Pasto, who had been vice principal at Manlius, became the vice principal in charge of the Fayetteville setup. In June, 1953, for example, there were separate commencements and Ray Van Giesen and Merrill Lewis had to shuttle back and forth to the commencements. As further evidence of the fact that 1952-1953 operated as separate schools, my son, David, has the 1953 Indicator, which was the Fayetteville High School yearbook, and that would be proof of that. That winter of 1952-53 the J-V basketball teams of both schools won their league and met in the county league playoff in the field house at the Manlius School. The crowd was so big, it couldn't go in either school gym. Merrill Lewis, in fact, showed up at the game in a clown suit, with a white hat, and one side of his suit was dark blue, the Manlius color, and the other side was purple, reflecting the Fayetteville High School Purple Eagles.
Apparently, the Board of Education and Ray and Merrill had decided they did not want to hurry and make mistakes. There was some question about building availability, a number of logistics problems, and another major one was what to do with the DeWitt students. The class of 1954, for example, in the combined school situation had a number of DeWitt students. (Dick Lowenberg, for example, had gone to Manlius to school. His father, Les, was on the Board of Education and married one of the DeWitt School alumni, Kathy Lawler Lowenberg, whose dad ran a pharmacy at the intersection in DeWitt.) What they did, to say, was in 1952-53 the two building setups would work out many problems jointly. For example, in 1952-53 we held joint faculty meetings. Planning committees and departments, sports, and everything else, were joint meetings. Student Council meetings were held jointly. Among the agreements were that no school colors, no yearbook names, etc. for either school be retained. All had to be developed. So that during 1952-53 we went through a process of getting ready for September of 1953 when what is now Wellwood, would become the Fayetteville-Manlius High School, what is now the Community Church on Pleasant Street in Manlius would become the Junior High School, grades 7-8, plus the K-6 classes from Manlius, because Manlius Elementary had not yet been built. There are some local citizens who were part and parcel of this. For example, I mention Dick Lowenberg, who was for many years the head of the Town of Manlius government. His dad, Les, was a Board member in Manlius at the time. Arlene Manton, who is now Ray Van Giesen's wife, was Ray's secretary through all of this. Judy Farrell, who recently retired as a language teacher at F-M High School, was in the first class to go four years through the F-M system--the class of 1957. There are others whose names I could give you if you thought it worthwhile, that might be able to furnish information.
This material that I will now give you is just incidental historical fact. As I mentioned, after centralization occurred, which as far as I know occurred sometime in 1951 (Ray Van Giesen would have that information specifically), students and teachers worked together on how to fit together. I was involved as a coach of baseball, junior class advisor, committee development to coordinate the activities program. So, I was directly involved to varying degrees in all these things. I don't know of anyone else, other than Chet Griffin, who was involved to the extent that I was in as many aspects. Some things were predetermined. For example, it was agreed that when the classes all came together in one building for the first year, in order to prevent Fayetteville from outnumbering Manlius in such things as Student Council elections, class officers, etc., there would be 2/2. These were determined before September as I remember, and elected before September. For example, if I remember correctly, the president and secretary were to come from Fayetteville, the vice president and treasurer were to come from Manlius. Somewhere in the back of my mind I have a feeling that one of those two from Manlius were Bob Ryan, Sue Ryan's husband. If he was, he can tell you better than I can.
Now cumbersome things that may be of interest to people. Where did all of the various customs, programs, etc. come from? For example, the commencement program design, with the design on the front of that, was drawn up by some artists at Estabrook Printing. Evans Estabrook was a prominent citizen and a very strong supporter of the school system. He actually delivered a commencement address to the Fayetteville High School program at one time. He had a printing plant and he put his artists to work to develop that design that was on the front with the oak leaves and acorn. On the front lawn of what is now Wellwood was a monster, monster oak tree. It has since been taken down. When it was taken down, Ken Phelps, who was then the Principal of Wellwood, had some of the smaller branches cut up into small parts. Ham King, who was the industrial arts teacher, had them finished off with shellac and so forth, and cut up into round pieces and given to various people who had been in the district for awhile and were aware of everything that went by it. As a result of that oak tree, the name of the yearbook was determined to be Oak Leaves. And, at that time when there was only one junior high, the name of the junior high yearbook was called the Acorn. What they are called now with two separate schools, I do not know.
Mrs. Andola, for example, developed the Sting. The Sting was kind of a hybrid which was developed and was the school newspaper, or was--whether it is now I don't know. The Sting was kind of a hybrid that developed out of the sixties. Originally it was called the Hornet's Nest. But in the sixties an underground newspaper evolved and eventually the Hornet's Nest disappeared and the Sting was the name adopted. There is another publication at the high school called Voices, or there was. This is primarily the result of interest in development by Karen Keane, who was an English teacher at that time and later a vice principal at the high school, since retired. The insignia that I mentioned about the commencement program, of course, also appears in silver on the graduation diploma cover. The oak tree design which floats all over the place on various things originally came from L. G. Balfour Company and was kind of a by product of the class ring setup. Now whether they still have class rings or not, I do not know, but I know when the centralization occurred a decision was made to have class rings begin with the juniors so they could have time enough to wear them in school because previously they had gotten their class rings in both schools in the second semester of their senior year and never had a chance to wear them. So, we took competition from about five major jewel designers. L. G. Balfour won it, and on the ring was the oak tree and from that came the printed oak tree thing. The Hornet Champion Knit developed the hornet symbol. Originally it was called the green hornets, but over time the word "green" kind of disappeared. So, in effect, the oak tree, L. G. Balfour, Hornet Champion Knit, which was the supplier of most of the athletic equipment, developed the green hornet sign. The seal design as we know it came out of Estabrook Printing.
You kind of made me back up. So, out of the oak tree came oak leaves, hornet's nest, the acorns, the alma mater, class rings, etc. These all reflected as a result of the oak tree. The athletic symbol was determined, actually the name was picked from a whole bunch of them, by the student body.
I might point out one other thing while I think of it. The question sometimes comes up, "Where on earth did the green and white come from?" I'm kind of blowing my own horn on this one, I guess. Arrangements were made to have a display in both schools of uniform colors. Matty Charles, who ran a sport shop in Syracuse, arranged to get whole sets of football and basketball uniforms in various combination colors. Assemblies were held and the students voted on it, and the dark green and white won. Where did the dark green and white come from? Well, various coaches and students made suggestions. Maroon and white, for example, was a favorite color of Chet Griffin and Rhys Roberts, who incidentally came to the system when he replaced me during the Korean War when I was gone. By the time I got back the school was growing so fast he just stayed. Black and white, or blue and white, dark blue probably, purple and white, were the two colors eliminated. Orange and blue was the common one because of Syracuse University. Jerry Prigoff, the Fayetteville basketball coach was all for that. There was kelly green and gold, kelly green and white--I think there were about eight or nine of them. I proposed the dark green and white. I had grown up in Hamilton, New York, where the colors were dark green, Dartmouth green and white, and I have always loved them, so they got the dark green and white. When it was voted on, that two won.
One other sidelight that might be of interest in this situation. When we got ready to start 1953-54, as I mentioned before, the two J-V basketball teams the year before had both won their league. Obviously, the basketball program was absolutely loaded. And, if we had one team, we were really going to do a disservice to the kids who had expected to play varsity basketball. So, the Board decided to run an "A" team and a "B" team. The "A" team played in the Northern League, which was the big schools setup. The "B" team was allowed to enter the smaller section league where Manlius had been on the condition that their record did not count and they could not play the playoffs. So, all of the boys who were, as I mentioned, out for basketball had an "A" team or a "B" team to play. Incidentally if I remember correctly, both of those teams went through the league undefeated that year. For example, the "A" team among other teams had the two Lynch boys, the youngest of whom, Dick, went to LeMoyne and held the LeMoyne scoring record for many, many years.
This was an example of how the Board and administration tried to make sure that nobody got short changed. Things like Showboat, which was originally a result of the American Field Service program in Fayetteville High School, and later it just stayed. Al Allen, who was the Director of Music, created the annual musical. The first ones were held on the Wellwood stage, and the first one that I can remember was "South Pacific." And, the star of the play was Luther, the pot-bellied sailor with the coconuts, etc., was Dale Drypolcher, who is a teacher now at ES-M, and many of you hear him on community television or on television programs as a color man on Syracuse University athletic events. The significance of this I mention is this: up until that time no athlete would be caught dead participating in any music program, but the fullback from the football team, Jim Meyers, had the lead; Dale, who was a tackle in football, if I remember correctly, had the other lead, and all of a sudden that barrier kind of disappeared.
There may be other viewpoints in how things developed, but this is how I remembered it. If somebody wants to contest me, good for you. Thank you.
Happy Holidays
