RGHStory 1
RIVERVIEW GARDENS
HIGH SCHOOL
A BRIEF HISTORY
(FROM EARLY ESTABLISHMENT TO 1969)
BY JANE BYERS
DEDICATION
A Brief History is dedicated to the memory of two distinguished alumni of Riverview Gardens High School:
Russell Dohrmann of the Class of 1957
and
Gayle Ronan of the Class of 1966
Russell Dohrmann - Riverview Gardens High School Class of 1957
Russell Dohrmann was a member of the Class of 1957, the last class to graduate from Riverview Gardens High School while it still was located on Chambers Road. He also was the brother of my brother-in-law, Arlan Dohrmann, and, though he lived in Boulder, Colorado, I saw him through the years at family gatherings. Affable and good-natured, he met his wife Gail while in college and was a devoted family man. Their two kids are Paul and Lisa. Russell earned a B.S. in Chemistry, Physics and Math from the University of Denver in 1961 and an M.S. in Computer Science in 1978 from the University of Colorado. Growing up in St. Louis, he became an Eagle Scout. At RGHS, he was a track star, specializing in the hurdles, and a member of the National Honor Society and the “R” Club. His passions were food and photography. He passed away April 10, 2015 from metastatic melanoma at age 75. I think it apropos to honor him with this dedication as the perfect representative of all those Riverview graduates of the three decades dating from the founding of the High School in 1927. His was a life's lesson in the meaning of integrity and an inquisitive spirit. You can read Russell’s obituary in the Appendix to Dedication on the RGHStory XTras page of the RamSite.
Russell's High School Line: ECHOES 1957
Two of Russell's Track Medals. PHOTO TAKEN BY PAUL DOHRMANN - AUGUST 2021
Gayle Ronan - Riverview Gardens High School Class of 1966
In 2019, I became curious about what had happened to Gayle Ronan. I spent some time nosing around the internet and eventually found an incredible obituary. I neither personally knew Gayle nor ever spoke to her, but as a young girl I idolized her and kept up with her from a distance. Gayle graduated from RGHS in 1966 and, of course, I graduated in 1969. In teenage years, there is a world of difference between a 13 and a 16 year old or a 15 and an 18 year old.
Back in those days, I made it my business to become familiar with the movers and shakers at Riverview Gardens High School. I must have studied my sister’s yearbooks, though my memory is hazy concerning how else I compiled information on these titans. As a lowly junior high kid, I zoned in on a couple of girls and a couple of boys for my role models. I was awe-struck by Gayle Ronan.
She was a petite beauty sporting a blond flip—a varsity cheerleader her Sophomore, Junior and Senior years and captain of the cheerleaders her Senior year. She was involved in so many activities at RGHS—class officer, Student Council, Terpsichore, gymnastics, Homecoming Court and National Honor Society among them. I thought she was the coolest of the cool—so vibrant and self-assured. I must have been in 9th grade when I saw her at the Dairy Queen on Bellefontaine Road with her friends. She would have been a Senior then. I just hung back and observed because I knew I was in the presence of Royalty.
An obituary writer, she rose to the rank of chief obituary writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. I am so happy to know that she had a rewarding career and that she was well regarded and respected among her colleagues. I’m not surprised. She raised her two children, a boy and a girl, as a single mother. Sadly, on April 16, 2009, Gayle Ronan died of multiple organ failure following a double lung transplant at age 61. You can read Gayle’s obituary in the Appendix to Dedication on the RGHStory XTras page of the RamSite.
Gayle's High School Line: ECHOES 1966
Captain of the Varsity Cheerleading Squad: ECHOES 1966
PART ONE
(Published July 14, 2019)
(Updated and Revised September 13, 2021,
and November 21, 2021)
and November 21, 2021)
PREFACE
A Brief History is not a scholarly endeavor. It is an informal and casual examination and survey of our school and campus history that took root in a personal curiosity I have had about the development and construction of the campus on Shepley Drive where we attended high school our Sophomore, Junior and Senior years from September 1966 to June 1969. While I was there, I took the campus for granted and never gave much thought to the spacious layout or the fact that it was comprised primarily of single-story classroom buildings, except for Building 9, the three-story Administration/Library/Classroom Building. I never truly recognized the clean lines, minimal adornments and muted neutral colors of the buildings. It was only years later that I got to thinking what a unique campus lifestyle we experienced by virtue of the architecture and the wide open spaces offered between and within buildings.
Aerial view of Building 9 and Building 2 in foreground and Cafeteria and Gym in background: ECHOES 1966
The open spaces created precious territory to cover between the seven-minute bells that rang at the end and beginning of a period. Ample real estate provided room for a massive bonfire at Homecoming.
Homecoming Bonfire - Fall of 1968: ECHOES 1969
Pep rallies, with cheerleaders taking the low ground in front of the Cafeteria and students taking the high ground in front of Building 3 (or vice versa), were a campus staple. There was something exhilarating about cheering at a football rally in that expansive campus atmosphere on a crisp October morning.
Football Pep Rally - Fall of 1964: ECHOES 1965
We enjoyed open area lounges in Buildings 2, 3 and 4. I found myself meeting friends in the Building 3 lounge every morning before the first bell.
Building 3 Lounge before First Bell with Pancake Breakfast Contest Sign: ECHOES 1968
And we had panoramic views of the outdoors from our classrooms through the continuous rows of bare windows.
Classroom encased by walls of glass windows: ECHOES 1968
Our Gym accommodated the entire student body (about 2,200 strong) during assemblies.
School Assembly in the Gym - 1966-67 School Year: ECHOES 1967
Music and industrial arts classes benefitted from tailor-made buildings and the Cafeteria provided abundant seating on two sides.
Walkway and Portico connecting Music Building (Building 8) on left and Industrial Arts Building (Building 7) on right, with Buildings 9 and 2 in background: ECHOES 1963
Diagram of Elmer Hoeferlin Cafeteria: STUDENT GUIDE 1966-67
Elmer Hoeferlin was head of maintenance and a custodian at RGHS for 24 years and the Cafeteria was named in his honor at the time it was constructed. He passed away on August 9, 1958. (Riverview Rites-PROM MAGAZINE September 1958).
The wide-ranging campus boasted a student parking lot, baseball and softball fields, field hockey and soccer fields and a football field and track that seemed akin to a modern stadium.
There were plaza-style walkways between Buildings 2 and 3 and Buildings 3 and 4, open courtyards and generously-wide sidewalks and stairways, as well as a sweeping plaza between the Cafeteria and the Gym. Negative space and spare landscaping were the order of the day. We were mid-century modern without knowing it.
Plaza-Style Walkway between Building 3 (on the right) and Building 4 (on the left), Gym in background: ECHOES 1966
Upper Sidewalks - plenty of space to move: ECHOES 1968
Stairway to Heaven???: ECHOES 1961
Plaza between Cafeteria and Gym: DeBEER SLIDES (October 1958)
My initial curiosity lead to a deeper curiosity about the establishment of the Riverview Gardens School District, the origin of the name “Riverview Gardens” and the road map that took us from there to 1969.
For me, it started with the YEARBOOKS. Some of the first yearbooks published went by the name “RIVUGA,” which later morphed into “REVUEN” and then “ECHOES.” In all, I have reviewed and studied RGHS yearbooks published in 1932, 1933, 1942, 1946 and 1949 through 1969, a total of 25 yearbooks. The record they leave is detailed and dazzling. They track how the high school grew, changed and progressed. We are indebted to the students and faculty who published each edition with care and creativity.
Title Page of The Rivuga Volume II (1932). "Rivuga" is an acronym for Riverview Gardens. This volume was the second yearbook to be published in the history of Riverview Gardens High School.
TAKE A BREAK! Click on the YouTube Slide Show below to see RIVUGA32!
ECHOES 1958: Published for 1957-58 School Year, the first school year that Riverview Gardens High School was fully operational on the new campus.
ECHOES 1960: Marsha Niebur's Yearbook
ECHOES 1965: Cornell Bowen's Yearbook
Things then took off when Ken DeBeer provided slides and photographs of RGHS from the 1950s and 1960s, taken and preserved by his father, Wayne DeBeer, the Principal of Riverview Gardens High School when the newly constructed high school campus opened in the mid-1950s. Dave Hartley converted the slides to photographs.
Wayne DeBeer: RGHS Principal
Notice the family photo on the credenza. Our classmate, Ken DeBeer, is pictured standing on the right in the photo. DeBEER FAMILY COLLECTION. Wayne DeBeer served as the RGHS Assistant Principal from 1953-56. He became Principal commencing with the 1956-57 school year, the year that the Class of 69 spent in Kindergarten. His tenure as RGHS Principal ran for 8 school years, ending with the 1963-64 school year, when he was promoted to Director of School Organization and then Assistant Superintendent of the District. He received his doctoral degree from St. Louis University in 1966 and retired from the District in 1983.
A search of the Internet turned up newspaper articles from 1917 to 2006, a 1991 Historic Buildings Survey regarding schools built before 1941 (prepared for the St. Louis County Department of Parks and Recreation), information from The State Historical Society of Missouri, historical accounts and information available on the websites for the City of Bellefontaine Neighbors, the City of Dellwood, the City of Moline Acres and the Village of Riverview, as well as historical accounts and information for Turner School, the school for black students in the District located in Prospect Hill near the Portland Cement Plant. Internet searches mined other treasures: School District maps, St. Louis County Township maps, municipality maps, subdivision maps and miscellaneous District publications. I also drew on information published in the 1968-1969 RGHS Student Guide and the 1967-1968 RGHS Buzz Book.
Several trips to the St. Louis County Library Headquarters Branch uncovered every volume of Prom Magazine, published from 1947 to 1973. RGHS first contributed to Prom Magazine in 1954, and the monthly “Riverview Rites” columns filled in gaps and provided nuggets here and there.
Another valuable resource was a six-volume case study of Valley Winds Elementary School conducted by the Washington University Graduate Institute of Education, the final report of which was completed in January of 1983 (the Valley Winds Report). The authors copiously studied Valley Winds in its first year, 1964, and returned 15 years later to make another set of observations. I focused primarily on Volume III, a 400-page narrative (supplemented by maps and charts) of community development within the area that became the Riverview Gardens School District and the community’s relationship with the School District. See References and Sources on the RGHStory XTras page for a detailed description of the Valley Winds Report.
The District Central Office gave me access to official School Board Minutes, primarily from the 1920s, which were valuable in piecing together the developments in the formation of the high school program established during that period and the construction of Turner School. The High School gave me access to several RGHS yearbooks, as well as poster-board-size scrapbooks that covered years from 1957 to 1964.
Finally, interviews of various Riverview graduates were informative and enlightening. Plus, correspondence and phone calls with our own classmates provided context and interesting, not to mention fun, stories and information, including some personal photographs.
I make no claim that these sources are exhaustive or that A Brief History is a comprehensive history of the public school system in St. Louis County, the Riverview Gardens School District or Riverview Gardens High School. I had an itch I wanted to scratch and A Brief History is the result. I hope you enjoy the history and the story I have written about our School District and High School and the family stories I have included in the mix. I have strived for accuracy in telling the tale and have written it with the RGHS Class of 1969 in mind. So, come along and join me for the ride!
I found the early history of the public schools in the State of Missouri fascinating, and, to gain a foothold in how the Riverview Gardens School District story unfolded, I am starting with the year 1820.
ESTABLISHMENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS
IN THE STATE OF MISSOURI
The Missouri State Constitution of 1820 authorized one or more public schools to be established in each Township in St. Louis County. A Township is a unit of land measurement established by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and carried across the Mississippi River into the Louisiana Purchase Territory in 1804. To avoid confusion as A Brief History progresses, I will refer to these townships as "Survey Townships." As a unit of land measurement, a Survey Township is not a political subdivision, such as a county, a city, a town or a village. Rather, a Survey Township is a geographic reference used in deeds and grants to define a property location, identified by letters and numbers, such as "T46N R7E." These Survey Townships still exist and references to them can be found in some deed descriptions of residential and commercial properties that we buy and sell today.
SIDEBAR: Distinguished from a Survey Township is a “Civil Township,” a unit of local government, originally rural in application. It is a geographic and political subdivision of a County, identified by a name, such as “St. Ferdinand.” The most common form of Civil Township government has an elected board of trustees or supervisors, whose responsibilities initially included oversight of public schools. After St. Louis City separated from St. Louis County (effective in 1878), St. Louis County was left with five Civil Townships: St. Ferdinand, the eventual situs of the Riverview Gardens School District; Central; Carondelet; Bonhomme; and Meramec. The St. Louis City Township, originally part of St. Louis County, was absorbed by St. Louis City at the time of separation. Today, St. Louis County is divided into 28 Civil Townships.
St. Louis County Civil Township Map showing the five Civil Townships that remained when the City of St. Louis separated from St. Louis County, effective 1878.
The City also was a Civil Township within the County before the separation.
St. Ferdinand Township Map.
The original area of the St. Ferdinand Township would also become home to the Ferguson-Florissant, Berkeley, Jennings, Fairview, Kinloch, Ritenour, Pattonville and Hazelwood School Districts.
Civil Township Map 2021.
The Civil Township map has changed dramatically over the years since 1878. St. Louis County contained 28 Civil Townships in 2021. The Riverview Gardens School District still is located in the St. Ferdinand Township.
To help you visualize the difference between a Civil Township and a Survey Township, I have included below (1) a Survey Township Diagram, (2) an 1876 Survey Township Map for St. Louis County and St. Louis City, and (3) an 1893 Survey Township Map. Typically, each Survey Township consists of 36 Sections and each Section is a square mile of 640 acres.
Survey Township Diagram.
The Sections of each Survey Township were numbered beginning with Section 1 in the northeast corner. The Section numbers snaked back and forth to Section 36 at the end in the southeast corner. Section 16, designated for public school purposes, is located in the third row in the western half of the Township.
Section 16 (640 acres) in each Survey Township was set aside as public property for public school purposes. Schools weren’t always located in Section 16. Instead, Section 16 lands (640 acres) of a given Survey Township were sold by the State and proceeds were applied to educational purposes in such Survey Township (whether in Section 16 or different Sections in the Survey Township). The boundaries of what became the Riverview Gardens School District are situated within Township 46 North Range 7 East (T46N R7E).
Survey Township Map 1876
This map illustrates how Survey Townships were laid out. Riverview Gardens School District is located in T46 R7E, outlined in red on the map. Township 46N R7E contains several jurisdictions and geological features: a portion of St. Louis County, a portion of St. Louis City, the boundary between the County and the City, a portion of the Mississippi River, a portion of the State of Illinois and the boundary between Missouri and Illinois. The County and the City incorporate all or a portion of 25 Survey Townships. At the time this map was drawn (1876), St. Louis City was still a part of St. Louis County.
1893 SURVEY TOWNSHIP MAP
That portion of Township 46 N Range 7 East located in the City of St. Louis is not highlighted on this map. The highlighted portion is located in St. Louis County. The inset in the lower right corner is a subdivision plan for Jenning's Est. and is not relevant to our story.
SIDEBAR: A closer examination of the Township 46 Range 7 Map above (1893 Survey Township Map) reveals many familiar names, even though it was drawn in 1893. The western boundary line is identified as Florissant Avenue and “St. Ferdinand” is referenced above the northern boundary line. You can see the Mississippi River, the City of St. Louis city limits and a road that was an early version of Riverview Drive to the east. In the upper northeast corner are four large tracts of land owned by various members of the Glasgow family. Does that name ring a bell? Railroad tracks run north and south through the eastern third of the Survey Township. These are the same railroad tracks that ran west of Toelle Lane—down the hill from East Jr. High when some of us were students there. Bellefontaine Road and Halls Ferry Road run north and south through the Survey Township just like they do today. Chambers Road was called Gibson Road to the east of Bellefontaine Road and Walker Road to the west, until it reaches Halls Ferry Road, where the name changes to Chambers Road, named after B.M. Chambers, a property owner near Ferguson.
A large tract of land south of Gibson and Walker Roads was owned by Dr. James E. Gibson. This is the land on which the one-room frame school building in the District sat originally. Portions of this tract were donated to the District by heirs to the Gibson Estate for construction of Gibson Elementary School. James E. Gibson was Betsy Peckron Guinn’s great grandfather.
Another large track (approximately 500 acres) located south of Gibson Road was owned by Nicholas A. Destrehan. Various portions of this land constitute the present-day Village of Riverview and the “Riverview Gardens” subdivision discussed below.
In the southwest corner, you can see where Lucus & Hunt and Jennings Station Road cross Florissant Avenue. Other names of interest are Prospect Hill (part of the Village of Riverview and near what became the Portland Cement Plant) and St. Cyr Road between Bellefontaine and Halls Ferry Roads. The Bissell Home fronting on Bellefontaine Road also is identified.
Just for fun, try to pinpoint the location of Riverview Gardens High School in 1969 on the 1893 Survey Township Map. I have made my determination. What is yours? It’s all very cool.
Over time, public school laws were revised and overhauled. A new State Constitution ratified in 1865, immediately following the Civil War, provided for the establishment and maintenance of free public schools for instruction of all persons in the State between the ages of 5 and 21 and further provided that separate public schools may be established for children of African descent. In the same year, the Missouri State Legislature passed a law requiring Civil Township supervisors and educational authorities in cities and villages to establish and maintain separate public schools for chilren of African descent, provided the number of such children within their respective jurisdictions exceeded 20. At the beginning of this period, popular opinion regarding free public schools for both white and black children in general was not looked on favorably. In the 1870s, growing sentiment in favor of public schools was evidenced by the increase in the number of students enumerated in the State and the number of schools opened. For example, as many as ten rural school districts were established in some Civil Townships.
Another new State Constitution ratified in 1875 did away with Civil Township supervision of education and County boards of education, to which local school boards had been subordinate, and vested power directly in local school boards. The 1875 Constitution mandated that separate free public schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent. The decentralization of school boards placed the responsibility of financial support of both white and black schools on the local districts in which a school was located.
By 1878, when the City of St. Louis effectively separated from St. Louis County, the County had 82 active rural school districts. Prior to 1910, Survey Township 46 North Range 7 East in St. Louis County contained three of those 82 active rural school districts within its boundaries: Moline was designated as District 6; Science Hill was designated as District 7; and Jennings School District was designated as District 4. A list of St. Louis County Place Names (1928-1945) published by The State Historical Society of Missouri indicates that Riverview Gardens School was formerly known as Science Hill, a “humorous name often used for schools in early days, as being centers of ‘science’ or knowledge.” Use of the word “humorous” seems an odd characterization. More likely, the name Science Hill reflects a serious choice based on emphasis on a science curriculum that became prevelant in the later years of the 19th Century and the early decades of the 20th Century.
SIDEBAR: The name Science Hill may have been an offshoot of a system of instruction in natural sciences adopted by the City of St. Louis public schools in 1871, which was innovative as a “spiral” curriculum and was likewise adopted by other schools. The course of study followed a pattern that built on itself as students progressed from one grade to the next:
Grade 1 - Outline of botany
Grade 2 - Outline of zoology and physiology
Grade 3 - Elements of physical science and natural physiology
Grade 4 - Expanded study of botany
Grade 5 - Expanded study of zoology and physiology
Grade 6 - Expanded study of natural physiology, including astronomy (think of our John Africano)
Grade 7 - Expanded study of natural science, including geology and meteorology
Grade 8 - Outline of natural physiology, with emphasis on construction of machinery
During the period stretching from the post-Civil War years through the first two decades of the 20th Century, there were no public schools that served black children in District 6 (Moline), District 7 (Science Hill) or District 4 (Jennings). The Valley Winds Report indicates that the 1870 census data shows the total black population in the entirety of St. Ferdinand Township was 950, a small number, given the size of St. Ferdinand Township at that time. Though there were no black schools in the Science Hill, Moline or Jennings School Districts, an area close to these Districts in the Central Township (which was located south of St. Ferdinand Township and included areas comprising present-day Normandy, Wellston, University City, Clayton, Olivette and Richmond Heights) had established a school for black students around 1869. It is possible that some of the children who attended this school were residents of the St. Ferdinand Township, for this school apparently was the only one for black students in the region of Science Hill, Moline and Jennings.
Moline (Survey Township 46 North Range 7 East) was re-designated as District #19 and, circa 1926, the newly constructed school building in District #19 was located on the south side of Chambers Road west of Winkler Road (1860 Chambers Road). Moline was an independent public school (Grades 1-8) and remained so until it was annexed to the Riverview Gardens School District in 1949.
Science Hill (Survey Township 46 North Range 7 East) was re-designated as District #20. The school building in District #20 fronted on Chambers Road (then called Gibson Road) east of Bellefontaine Road. Science Hill School District rated “first class” in 1910, as certified by the Missouri Superintendent of Schools. Such a rating was based on a score of 80% with regard to school buildings, apparatus, equipment, grounds, outbuildings, course of study and organization.
Students attending the Science Hill and Moline schools who desired a diploma after 8th grade, or who sought admission to a high school, were required to pass an examination administered by the St. Louis County Superintendent of Schools, a position created in 1900.
Science Hill (District #20) and Moline (District #19) were the immediate forerunners of the Riverview Gardens School District. Note that I use the names Science Hill School District and District #20 interchangeably in A Brief History.
According to an article by Edwin J. Benton (District Superintendent during our time at RGHS) that appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 17, 1970, the first school building in District #20 was a one-room frame building located on the hill of Gibson Estate, on the south side of Chambers Road (then called Gibson Road) across from Dorothy Avenue. Today, Dorothy Avenue still is located in the Village of Riverview off of Chambers Road between Toelle Lane and McCartney Lane. A few years later (the exact year is unspecified), this building was physically relocated to the site of what ultimately became East Jr. High on the north side of Chambers Road (then called Gibson road) just east of Bellefontaine Road. At the time of the move, two frame rooms were added to the building.
This building is identified as the Gym in RIVUGA 1932 and RIVUGA 1933. I believe this building is the one-room frame building school that was physically relocated to the site of what eventually became East Jr. High. I think the front of the building was the original one-room structure and the structure in the back constituted the two-room addition constructed after the building was relocated. I am not sure how long this building remained on the school grounds, but we know that a gym was added to the Science Hill School building in 1936, and my guess is that this building may have been demolished at that time. We know for sure that it wasn't around when we attended East Jr. High!
In these old rural school districts, school buildings tended to be replaced periodically. Construction began with log structures and progressed through frame to brick structures. Schools grew from one room to two rooms to four rooms.
In the Valley Winds Report, E. J. Schuchardt, a District #20 School Board Director (stay tuned for more about him as our story develops), described the Science Hill School of 1920 (over a century ago) when he first was elected to the Board, as follows:
“When I went on (the board) we had in the school 80 children, we had two rooms, we had 40 children in each room. Well with the increasing number of people coming out here it started to overflow and, in other words, the next year there were about 20 or 30 over so we had $8,000 in the treasury and at that time we had the two rooms and outside toilets, the old toilet, no plumbing and no running water, we had a well outside….And so we got together with the board and we knew we had to build a new room so we built a new room and we had the potbellied stoves, those big pot belly stoves in these two rooms and they had to go out and get a bucket of water and bring it in for the kids to drink water.”
At this point, I want to discuss the establishment of Turner School in District #20 in the early 1920s. Turner School was the lone school that served black students in the District until 1955, after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision in 1954. It’s likely that very few of us has little, if any, knowledge of Turner School or its history. Several years ago, Sandy Elmer Williams told me more than once that there had been a black school near the Portland Cement Plant. I was totally baffled. I didn’t understand why I had never heard of the existence of such a school in the District. From this point forward as we go along, I’ll be sharing with you the story of Turner School. The information and sources that I have found don’t always agree with regard to smaller details, but I feel confident that I have been able to piece together the big picture with fairly reliable accuracy.
In 1902, the Portland Cement Company opened operations near the Mississipi River along what is now Riverview Drive just north of Hall Street. Nearby, the Company developed Prospect Hill, a conclave of small homes built on Scranton Avenue, Leeton Avenue and West Avenue to house its workers. The community was akin to a company town. In 1904, there were 15 to 20 families residing there and, by 1939, there were over 100 families. After WWI, work available at the plant and inexpensive housing drew a dozen or so black families to the “Hill” section of Prospect Hill. White families who worked at the plant lived in a separate section of Prospect Hill.
As the law stood in the State of Missouri in 1919, school boards of districts having 15 or more black children of school age were required to establish and maintain a separate school for those children. Furthermore, it was illegal for black students to attend white schools and for white students to attend black schools.
In time, the parents of 19 black children from Prospect Hill petitioned the School Board to open a school for their children. It isn’t clear exactly when the parents approached the Board, but E.J. Schuchardt (who described the Science Hill School above) was on the Board at that time and in an interview stated, “Well, they wanted a school so we had to give it to them, that was the law, so we built a one room frame school house down there.” Turner School most likely opened in the fall of 1923 or early in 1924, making it the second school in District #20. The School Board actions taken throughout 1924-25 with respect to insurance, electrical wiring, and the purchase of shades and a bookcase for Turner School suggest that the school had to have been completed by early 1924 at the latest.
Notably, on April 29, 1924, the Board moved to name the school “Charles Henry Turner” after an American zoologist, educator and comparative psychologist born two years following the end of the Civil War. Charles Henry Turner was the first African American to receive a graduate degree from the University of Cincinnati. He then earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. In 1908, Turner took a teaching position at Sumner High School in the City of St. Louis, where he taught until he retired in 1922 due to ill health. He died in 1923 at age 55. While at Sumner, Turner conducted extensive research on bees, much of it at O’Fallon Park in North St. Louis.
SIDEBAR: Charles H. Sumner High School was the first high school for African-American students established west of the Mississippi River in 1875 in the City of St. Louis. The school is named after Charles H. Sumner, a prominant abolitionist and U.S. Senator in the 19th Century. Originally, Sumner High School was located on 11th Street between Poplar and Spruce Streets, a heavily polluted area close to lead works, lumber and tobacco warehouses, the train station and brothels. In 1907, The City appropriated nearly $300,000 for construction of the new Sumner High School, designed by William B. Ittner, described as the most influential man in school architecture in the United States. The school opened in 1908 in the Ville of North St. Louis.
An article published in The Journal of Negro History in 1920 describes Sumner High School as “a magnificient building. It is three stories high and is well equipped. It contains a large adutitorium, and gymnasiums on the top floor. On the second floor are laboratories, for the teaching of chemistry, physics, physiology, and biology. Courses for girls are given in domestic science and in domestic art. The school also maintains a commercial department. In the basement there are shops in which the boys are taught carpentry, cabinet making, machinery, and blacksmithing. A swimming pool for the boys is also located in the basement. There is provided a cafeteria at which the chilren can purchase at a small cost their noonday meal. The school has a library containing about 2,000 volumes and equipment valued at $30,000.”
Graduates of Sumner High include Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Chuck Berry and Tina Turner, Hall of Fame tennis star Arthur Ashe, actor Robert Guilliame of “Benson” fame, opera singer Grace Bumbry, and our own Julius Hunter, St. Louis television news anchor.
ORIGIN OF THE NAMES “RIVERVIEW GARDENS” and “VILLAGE OF RIVERVIEW”
On May 26, 1917, an article published in The St. Louis Star and Times, carried a reference to the descriptive name “Riverview Gardens.” I have always thought Riverview Gardens is the loveliest of names and often wondered where the name originated. As best as I can discern, this reference most likely is the revelatory key. A subdivision for home sites, Riverview Gardens was luxuriously described as follows: “On the hills adjoining the city water works to the south, overlooking the Mississippi River, shaded by magnificent forest trees, carpeted with lush grass and wild flowers, lies the Destrehan tract of 255 acres, the last river front property in St. Louis available for home sites…. Riverview Gardens faces Riverview Drive, which runs for miles along the river and is one of the prettiest boulevards around St. Louis…. Altogether, Riverview Gardens presents a beauty spot in itself, surrounded by many natural beauties, a place to live and be clean, comfortable and healthy. It is a place to make a permanent home and to raise a family in the open air.”
The Destrehan family was one of the oldest French families in St. Louis, and the old Destrehan home, which occupied a commanding spot for more than a hundred years on the “Diamond Hill” portion of the Riverview Gardens property, was razed to make way for the choicest home sites. The property was acquired and marketed by Riverview Gardens Realty Company located in downtown St. Louis. You can see the location of the Destrehan property in the 1893 Survey Township Map above.
RIVERVIEW GARDENS SUBDIVISION of 1917.
This map shows the boundaries and street names of the Riverview Gardens Subdivision marketed by Riverview Gardens Realty Company beginning in 1917, over 100 years ago. The subdivision included a sizable portion of what would become the Village of Riverview in 1950. The southeast boundary is also the boundary with the City of St. Louis. The actual subdivision plat would have shown the lots created in the subdivision. E.J. Schuchardt built a home on Rivermont Drive on the east side of the subdivision.
The name “Village of Riverview” took its cue from the name “Riverview Gardens.” In 1919, residents living in the area organized the Village of Riverview Improvement Association (VRIA), even though the Village of Riverview would not be incorporated as a village until 1950. One of the residents who helped to organize the VRIA was 28-year old E.J. Schuchardt (introduced above), who lived at 9874 Rivermont Drive in the Village of Riverview. In the Valley Winds Report, he was called “F. K. Tholozan” (see References and Sources on the RGHS History XTras page regarding code names in the Valley Winds Report). He moved to the area in January 1919. Through his affiliation with the VRIA, Schuchardt was elected as one of the three school board members of District #20 in April, 1920. He served as a director on the Board of Education with two other men, one of whom was Betsy Peckron Guinn’s grandfather, Ernest Boyd (see SIDEBAR below). In 1921, Schuchardt became President of the Board and continued serving on the Board as either a director or the School District Clerk until 1927. I mention this because Schuchardt took an action in 1925 that impacted the Riverview Gardens School District to the present day. Read on!
ESTABLISHMENT OF HIGH SCHOOLS IN
ST. LOUIS COUNTY (INCLUDING
RIVERVIEW GARDENS HIGH SCHOOL)
Well into the early decades of the 20th Century, resident white students of St. Louis County, including those from District #20 and District #19, who wanted to pursue a high school education had to travel downtown to Central High School, founded in 1853 as the first high school west of the Mississippi and located initially at 15th and Olive and later at Garrison and Natural Bridge. Until 1954-55, all resident black students of St. Louis County who wanted to pursue a high school education had to travel to Sumner High School or one of three other African-American high schools: Douglass High School (opened in Webster Groves in 1925); Vashon High School (opened in the City of St. Louis in 1927); and Kinloch High School (opened in 1936). If a student enrolled in any one of these high schools, the school district in which that student resided was responsible for paying tuition for that student.
The Kirkwood School District established the first public high school program in St. Louis County in 1896, followed by the Webster Groves School District in 1897. The Ferguson School District started a 2-year high school course in 1896 and expanded to a 4-year program in 1903. Students who earned diplomas after completing 8th grade at Science Hill School or Moline School may also have enrolled in nearby Ferguson to complete a high school program.
By the early 1920s, all of the lots in the Riverview Gardens subdivision described and depicted above had been sold and houses of all sizes and designs were constructed throughout the decade. Those of us familiar with the Village of Riverview can easily see in our minds’ eyes the array of housing styles that became the norm. With new housing, school aged children had multiplied and an urgent need for additional public school facilities grew. With the prospect for continued growth, the three-member District #20 School Board proposed to reorganize the Science Hill School District from a common school district to a town school district, meaning the District would be governed by six school board directors and would be positioned to provide both elementary and high school progams. Upon compliance with all statutory requirements by the School Board, voters approved the reorganization plan on April 7, 1925.
According to the Valley Winds Report, unbeknownst to the community, Schuchardt, as the School District Clerk, unilaterally changed the name “Science Hill” to “Riverview Gardens” in the reorganization filing submitted to the Missouri State Department of Education. I contacted the Department of Education to obtain a copy of the filing from almost a century ago, but, unfortunately, it was not to be found. However, on May 11, 1925, the minutes of a special session of the School Board referenced for the first time the Riverview Gardens School District instead of School District #20 or Science Hill School District. Whether the name change was intentional or inadvertent, I heartily applaud the name of “Riverview Gardens” for the School District. It’s a beauty!
The Moline School District (District #19) retained its common school district classification until it was annexed to the Riverview Gardens School District in 1949.
In 1926, a new Science Hill School building was constructed on the north side of Chambers Road (then called Gibson Road) just east of Bellefontaine Road. The newly constructed two-story brick building was the central portion of what ultimately became East Jr. High and was used then as an elementary school with an enrollment of approximately 130 students. Even though the School District name changed to “Riverview Gardens,” the school itself continued to be called “Science Hill” for several years to come in reference to elementary and junior high programs in the building. In the same year, Riverview Elementary School on Diamond Drive in the subdivision of Riverview Gardens was constructed and had an enrollment of 120 students.
At the end of the 1926-27 school year, the Riverview Gardens School District boasted three schools: Science Hill School (Grades 1-8), Turner School (Grades 1-8), and Riverview Elementary School (Grades 1-4).
Science Hill School on the north side of Chambers Road (then called Gibson Road) east of Bellefontaine Road - constructed in 1926. RIVUGA 1932.
For those of us who attended East Jr. High from 1963 to 1966, this was the original building of our school. The original building was extended to the west and a short stone wall in front near the street had been added, but there was no doubt we were attending classes in a 40-year old building. When I was there, I vaguely remember hearing rumors that the building used to be the High School and I found that to be quite a fantastic proposition!
Turner School was constructed circa 1923 in the Prospect Hill Neighborhood near the Portland Cement Plant. It served the black students (Grades 1-8) of the Riverview Gardens School District until 1955. The original school building can been seen in the background. WRIGHT: DISAPPEARING BLACK COMMUNITIES. It was demolished in the mid-1940s and replaced by a new building (see below).
Riverview Elementary School on Diamond Drive - constructed in 1926: RIVUGA 1932
In 1927, Riverview Gardens High School was founded in the Science Hill School with an initial enrollment of six students. In 1928, the High School expanded to a two-year program, then to a three-year program in 1929 and a four-year program in 1930. Enrollment was growing to the extent that four new classrooms were required. At that time, the Science Hill School was home to pupils in grades 1-12. At the same time, Riverview Elementary functioned exclusively as an elementary school. By the Fall of 1931, Riverview Gardens High School was designated as a first-class high school, meaning that the school maintained a four-year course of standard work in English, mathematics, science and history for a school year term of at least nine months and employed during that period at least three approved teachers in high school work. Along with the new designation, Riverview Gardens High School was firmly established in a new building constructed in 1930, according to RIVUGA 1932 (the second annual yearbook published by the Seniors at RGHS) and RIVUGA 1933 (the third annual yearbook published by the Seniors at RGHS). The new building included only grades 7-12 and was located directly to the east of, and perpendicular with, the Science Hill School, which continued to function as an elementary school (grades 1-6). Studying photographs and sketches from RIVUGA 1932 and RIVUGA 1933, I have concluded that Science Hill School and the newly constructed High School were physically joined and the newly constructed High School contained the four new classrooms.
Riverview Gardens High School - constructed 1930.
This building became the east wing of the original Science Hill School building. In 1939, a library and home economics facility were added to the south end of this building. I remember taking Miss Martin's English Class in the classroom at the upper left and Mr. Lake's Civics Class and Mr. Littlefield's Science Class, each in the classroom at the lower right. In our day, the double doors led to the covered walk down the stairs to the Cafeteria and the lower classrooms building.
Science Hill School and Riverview Gardens High School: RIVUGA 1932.
For me, this photograph (Exhibit 1) is proof positive that the new High School constructed in 1930 was physically connected to the original Science Hill School constructed in 1926. You can see the High School building situated perpendicular to the Science Hill School building. The High School building appears to be solid brick with no windows. The Science Hill School functioned as an elementary school for Grades 1-6, while the High School served students in Grades 7-12.
Sketch of Science Hill School and Riverview Gardens High School: RIVUGA 1933.
To bolster my argument, I present Exhibit 2, a sketch that appears in the 1933 yearbook. The back of the Science Hill School is depicted with the big chimney. The High School is connected at the east end. The railroad tracks are there, the same as they existed down the hill to the east from East Jr. High when we were there.
The Valley Winds Report features a 1983 interview with a 1931 graduate of RGHS, who made the following observation: “[I]t was during the bootleg days….we also had them (stills) right there by the school (Science Hill) there—there was always a fire at Gallo’s….they had a fire every now and then—the place would burn—they’d hide it in the manure pile and stacks—whiskey and what not. They’d (‘revenuers’) fly over in a dirigible, you know, and they would look with their binoculars, you know, they had an idea….”
Could it be that the depiction of the hot air balloon (a dirigible) in the sketch above was a subtle slice of humor about the Feds that flew over the area looking for illegal stills? RIVUGA 1933 would have been published at the end of the 1932-33 school year, several months before the repeal of prohibition on December 5, 1933. To me, it makes perfect sense. Dan Johanningmeier also recalls a family member who lived in the Larimore/Bellefontaine Road area at that time talking about balloons flying overhead to search for bootleg whiskey operations. Query whether there is a connection between the so-called bootleg era in the School District and the Little Brown Jug, a most coveted Homecoming prize!
RIVUGA 1932 shows a graduating class of four students, three girls and one boy. One of the girls is Virginia (Ginnie) Schuchardt. Could she have been the daughter of E.J. Schuchardt?
RGHS Class of 1932 (from left) Helen Hartwig (Shorty), Florence Bridgford (Pat), Virginia Schuchardt (Ginnie) and Lorenz Hammerschmidt (Hammer): RIVUGA 1932. Dan Johanningmeier remembers that Helen Hartwig was his Sunday School Teacher at St. Stephen United Church of Christ at 8500 Halls Ferry Road (Halls Ferry and McClaren Streets near the Circle). This was around 1962 when Dan was 11. Helen was a member of the Church for many years and moved from the area in the mid-1970s. Virginia Schuchardt donated her copy of The RIVUGA (1932) to RGHS many years later when she lived in Chesterfield.
In 1936, a gym was added to the original Science Hill School building and, by 1939, a library wing and home economics facility were added to the High School, which then had an enrollment of 175. Riverview Elementary also benefited from several additions and had increased enrollment to 643.
There is conflicting information regarding when the High School adopted its school colors. One source indicates 1936 was the operative year when school colors were chosen: Royal Blue to represent loyalty and Gold to represent quality. Another source says that the student body voted on the school colors in 1941 and chose Royal Blue and Gold. In 1937, the Ram was chosen as the High School mascot.
In the 1930s, Highway 367/Lewis & Clark Boulevard (then called Highway 99) was constructed. Significantly, this road functioned as the boundary line between the Riverview Gardens and Moline School Districts. During this decade the “Gibson” and “Walker” portions of Chambers Road were renamed Chambers Road and the entirety of Chambers Road was resurfaced.
Backtracking, we find that the Board of Education appointed its first Superintendent, a woman, in 1928. Vergie Lloyd not only served as Superintendent until 1930 but also served as Junior High and High School Principal, all at a salary of $175.00 a month. It would be 1995 before another woman was appointed as Superintendent. Elmer W. Pollock succeeded Lloyd as Superintendent at a salary of $250.00 a month. Pollock’s sudden death catapulted E. M. Lemasters into the Superintendency, a position he held until 1963.
In the Spring of 1937, Superintendent Lemasters traveled to Stowe Teachers College in the City of St. Louis and interviewed 22 year old Marion Jenkins Brooks, a student at Stowe. Originally called Sumner Normal School, Stowe was an African-American teachers college founded as an extension of Sumner High School to train black teachers. Its counterpart, Harris Teachers College, was a white teachers college. Harris and Stowe would merge in 1954. The enrollment at Turner School had grown in the last decade and a half and the Riverview Gardens School District was ready to hire a second teacher for the school. Marion Jenkins Brooks had grown up in Kirkwood, attended high school at Sumner High in the Ville and was on the verge of obtaining her teaching degree from Stowe when she interviewed with Lemasters. She accepted his offer (and her first teaching job) because the number of students enrolled in Turner School was much smaller than the classroom sizes in the St. Louis City schools. She taught five years at the school, from 1937 to 1942. The Valley Winds Report contains a lengthy and informative 1980 interview with Brooks, who provided personal recollections and impressions of her teaching experiences at Turner. While I can’t share the entire interview with you, I would like to highlight some points that will acquaint you with the school when she was there.
She taught with another woman during her tenure at the school. Apparently, she also served as Principal, as evidenced by a program cover for the 1938 graduation exercises. Alma Patterson taught grades one through three, while Brooks alternated teaching grades four, six and eight one year and grades three, five and seven the next year. There was a graduating class every other year. Enrollment never exceeded 35 students during her five years at Turner School. The school building itself contained two classrooms. The classroom in which Brooks taught spanned the entire front of the building and was about 15 by 20 feet. The classroom in the back of the building was smaller. Entry to the second classroom was through the back door so that each classroom had its own entry/exit door. A staircase between the two classrooms led to bathrooms in the basement. According to Brooks, “We had indoor toilets with washrooms. We had standard elementary classrooms with no great embellishment but also no great deficits, the room was warm, we had a good janitorial service, the heating plant was both ample and efficient.” Books and teaching supplies were a mix of old and new—some items were discards from Science Hill School and Riverview Elementary while others were new and unused.
Turner School Commencement Program-1938. Marion Jenkins Brooks is listed as the Principal. WRIGHT: DISAPPEARING BLACK COMMUNITIES
The only administrator with whom Brooks had any contact while at Turner School was Superintendent Lemasters. Brooks indicates that she and Lamasters did not interact a great deal. “To begin with, at that time, you weren’t supposed—Blacks and Whites weren’t supposed to interact anyway, not too much.” Their relationship was generally professional, cordial and cooperative. “He brought me supplies, he saw that I had everything I needed, everything that I asked for, he got me….If I wanted to do something, I’d ask him—he never negated any of my plans or anything like that. We never had any conflicts.”
On Brooks’ watch, the school and community started a PTA, with the parents becoming quite involved. “The school was almost like a family and then the community and the school just got to be very much like a family. There really got to be some almost primary relationships.” In Marion Brooks’ assessment, “We had a good school—our kids learned….We had [learning activities and exercises] that gave us self-respect and self-esteem and accomplishment and dignity. We really didn’t have to have it handed to us….[The kids] had the security of knowing what was expected of them and they did it.”
In retooling for the war effort beginning in 1942, the Portland Cement Company expanded it’s open-pit mining operations and began blasting and demolishing the company housing in the black section of Prospect Hill. The encroaching mine operations reduced the enrollment of Turner School by half and two teachers were no longer required. At this time, Marion Brooks left the Riverview Gardens School District.
Marion Jenkins Brooks. WESLEY: LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING.
In the late 1940s, the Kirkwood School District hired Brooks as a permanent substitute teacher at a black elementary school in Kirkwood, followed by a five-year stint as a teacher at the James Milton Turner School in Meachum Park. In 1955, the Kirkwood School District desegregated its schools as a consequence of Brown v. Board of Education and hired Brooks to teach geography (and later economics, government and sociology) at the newly constructed Kirkwood High School. In 1976 she was recognized as Teacher of the Year by the Kirkwood School District. In 1978, she was tapped as Teacher of the Year in the State of Missouri and subsequently was chosen as one of the four National Honorary Teachers of the Year.
By the end of WWII, the school, the black Baptist church in Prospect Hill and surrounding homes were displaced by a strip mine. Some of the houses and both the school and church were relocated to another area of Prospect Hill. The District constructed a new school in 1946 to replace the original Turner School. The second Turner School served black students in the District until 1955, when it closed permanently following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, after which the 16 students at Turner were integrated into the white elementary schools in the District and Turner School became a District storage facility.
Turner School-1946. WRIGHT: DISAPPEARING BLACK COMMUNITIES.
This picture had to have been taken in 1969, or later. I am pretty sure the tail end of the car pictured is a Ford Maverick, which did not debut until the spring of 1969 (my Dad bought one and I drove it the summer of 1969). The building would have been used then as a storage facility by the District. The caption under the picture states that Turner School opened in 1925. Based on my research, I believe the school opened in 1923 or, at the latest, early in 1924. In any event, Turner School operated as a school for black children in the District (Grades 1-8) for over 30 years before it finally closed in 1955.
Like Turner School, the memory of Science Hill School also faded with the passage of time. At some point, the Science Hill School building space was appropriated totally by the High School and Junior High School with their growing enrollments, and the designation of “Riverview Gardens” became preeminent. Common usage of the name “Science Hill” eventually disappeared. I have not researched the years of the 1930s and 1940s in great detail beyond the information provided here, only because those years are not the focus of A Brief History. Perhaps it will become a project for another time.
Perhaps the last vestige of the Science Hill School - a street sign in a Bissell Hills neighborhood. PHOTO TAKEN BY JANE BYERS - JUNE 2019
Front Cover of The RIVUGA Volume III (1933). This volume was the third yearbook to be published in the history of Riverview Gardens High School.
TAKE A BREAK! Click on the YouTube Slide Show below to see RIVUGA33!
SIDEBAR: You can’t have graduated from Riverview Gardens High School without remembering all of the bond issues that were voted on from our elementary through our high school years. I found two news clippings, one from 1921 in The St. Louis Star and Times and one from 1929 in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, regarding improvement propositions for the Science Hill School. As when we were kids, it sometimes was a struggle to pass improvement bond issues.
The 1921 clipping stated that “[i]n the Science Hill District there are 160 pupils housed in a two-room building. The people were soon to vote on a proposition to build a new four-room school, but now they will be unable to build for a year, and then only if the whole county will give a two-third vote for it.”
The 1929 clipping stated that “[a] $52,000 proposal for the improvement of Science Hill School, Bellefontaine and Gibson Roads, was voted down, 241 to 192, in the Riverview Garden [sic] district.”
FAMILY CONNECTIONS
For the record, RIVUGA 1932 provides class pictures of all of the students who attended school in the Riverview Gardens School District for the 1931-32 school year, except for students who attended Turner School. There were three distinct groups, each with its own dedicated faculty (four teachers for each group) and school building. Riverview Elementary School on Diamond Drive had approximately 97 pupils in grades 1-4 only. Science Hill School on Chambers Road (then called Gibson Road) had approximately 102 pupils in grades 1-6. Riverview Gardens High School on Chambers Road (then called Gibson Road) had approximately 109 pupils in grades 7-12 (40 in grades 7-8 and 69 in grades 9-12). I arrived at these numbers simply by counting heads in the class photographs featured in RIVUGA 1932. Total enrollment in the District (comprising Science Hill School, Turner School, Riverview Elementary School and Riverview Gardens High School) for the 1931-32 school year was approximately 330 pupils, with only four Seniors.
RIVUGA 1933 dispensed with all grade school class photographs (though it does include a photograph of elementary school faculty, a total of eight teachers) and featured class photographs for grades 7-12 only. There were approximately 113 pupils in grades 7-12, 46 in grades 7-8 and 67 in grades 9-12, with 14 Seniors. I am estimating that Turner School had an enrollment of 20-30 students at this time, though I found no photographs of Turner School students for the 1932-33 school year.
The class group photographs in RIVUGA 1932 identify several students who I believed might be related to some of our classmates in the Class of 1969: Crow, Pohlman, Potts, Hutchison, Fleming, Carroll, Nichols and Demsey. I contacted several of our classmates with no success in finding possible family connections. However, I hit pay dirt when I found the fathers of Denise Schewe Bourg, Betsy Peckron Guinn, David Manning and Barb Black Butts!
The Science Hill School Fifth Grade Class photograph shows Lawrence Schewe (and Denise’s Uncle Chester), James Peckron and Louis Manning.
Denise related that her dad’s family lived near the school and he liked to tell how he tromped through the snow every winter at 5:00 a.m. to shovel coal into the school furnace. Chester was his older brother. Larry Schewe graduated in 1939, attended night school and served in the army in the Philippines, Guam and possibly Saipan during the War. When Denise and Curt lived in Guam from 1990 to 1998, both sets of parents visited them and they toured WWII sites with their dads around the island and in Hawaii. Larry Schewe passed away in January 2013 at the age of 92 just months after his wife, Gloria, passed in August 2012 at the age of 90.
Betsy related that her dad, Jim Peckron, was raised by a single-mom in what could be described as a one-room shanty on Diamond Drive in Riverview. After completing 8th grade, he quit school and eventually met and married Margaret Louise Boyd in 1941 at age 20. As Betsy describes it, theirs was a classic story of uptown girl meets downtown boy, fall in love and build a great life together. They both were likable firebrands and served in WWII, he with the Army in Europe and she with the Marines. After the War, Margaret’s parents (i.e., Betsy’s grandparents) helped Jim start a screw-machine (tool and die) factory in Fenton and he made a successful go of it. He passed away in May 1977 and Margaret passed away in July 1978, both, regrettably, way too young. You can read more about James and Margaret Peckron and Betsy’s family history in the SIDEBAR below.
According to both Betsy and Denise, Larry Schewe and Jim Peckron were best friends through their school years, through WWII and throughout their lives. Betsy affectionately remembers Larry Schewe not only as good looking but also as gentle and kind and extremely creative—an artist for life. His smile and genuine laugh were unforgettable and she fondly recalls he was her dad’s closet and dearest friend.
David related that his dad, Lou Manning, was born in 1921 and passed away at age 91 in 2013. He had an older sister, Dorothy, and a younger brother, Milton, who appear in other class photographs in RIVUGA 1932. After graduating, Lou joined the Army Air Corp at age eighteen. He was 6’5” and wanted to be a pilot but did not qualify because he was too tall. So he became a mechanic and worked on bombers during WWII, primarily in Australia and New Zealand. In 1946, he married Mildred. They were married for 66 years. After the War, Lou worked at Ozark Airlines and retired from TWA after 30-plus years of service. Lou Manning built the house where David grew up, at 10444 Toelle Lane, a hop, skip and jump from RGHS on Shepley Drive.
RGHS Basketball Team (1936): MANNING FAMILY COLLECTION. Lou Manning is #10 in the front row. In 1936, a new Gym was constructed as an addition to the original Science Hill School building. This picture was taken in that new Gym. Thanks Dave!
Riverview Gardens High School Class of '39: MANNING FAMILY COLLECTION. You can find Louis Manning in the top row and Lawrence Schewe in the vertical row on the far right. They graduated from RGHS 30 years before Dave and Denise graduated from RGHS!
Lou Manning in 1939 as an Army Air Corp Recruit: MANNING FAMILY COLLECTION. This picture is a classic because as an Army Air Corp Recruit, Lou Manning is wearing his Riverview Letter Sweater. Chalk one up for the Home Team! I love this photo!
Last, but not least, is a photograph of the Riverview Elementary School Third Grade Class, in which Harry Black appears:
Barb related that her dad, Harry Black, did not graduate from RGHS but dropped out to get a job and later join the army, where he was stationed stateside during WWII, guarding German POWs in Louisiana. After the War, he secured his GED and worked for McDonnell Douglass for 38 years. While there, he met all of the original Astronauts in the NASA Space Program in the early 1960s. Wow! That’s something not too many Americans can claim. He and his wife Jennie were married 62 years. He grew up on Jeffrey Drive in Riverview. When Barb was in college, her parents moved to the Spanish Lake area and later to O’Fallon, Missouri. Harry also had a brother, Barb’s Uncle Bobby, who was in first grade when Harry was in third grade. Bobby passed away about three years before Harry, who passed in March 2017 at age 93.
Because so many of us, including my own family, moved into the School District when we were kids, it never occurred to me when I was younger and attending RGHS that there were families in the District with a connection to the area that went back decades and even generations. We seldom talked about such things as kids and teenagers. Family histories were not on our radar then, but it’s a special treat to discover those connections now.
SIDEBAR: Probably the most prominent family connection in the RGHS Class of 1969 and the Riverview Gardens School District belongs to Betsy Peckron Guinn. Her great great grandparents were among the first pioneer residents of the area. At this point, drawing on history lessons from our school days at RGHS really comes in handy. You’ll recall that Spain and France flipped the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi River (including the land shown on the 1893 Survey Township Map above) back and forth a couple of times. In 1762, France ceded the Territory to Spain during the French and Indian War and, in 1801, Spain secretly ceded the Territory back to France. Then Napoleon and Jefferson got into the act and the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. In the immediate years following the Louisiana Purchase, Fort Bellefontaine was established and commanded by General Daniel Bissell for several years. Over time, Fort Bellefontaine primarily functioned as a cantonment and by 1834 was abandoned as troops were moved to Jefferson Barracks.
During the Spanish and French periods of control of the Louisiana Territory, ownership of land in the area consisted of grants issued by Spanish and French officials. Ellen St. Cyr (a familiar name) had an original French land grant. The Destrehan tract discussed in the SIDEBAR above with regard to the 1893 Survey Township Map likely was also an original French land grant. Prior to and following the abandonment of Fort Bellefontaine, the Americans followed suit and divided the surrounding area into numerous land grants, some of which were sizable tracts.
Enter Dr. James W. Gibson, a native of Scotland, who became a land grant owner in the early 1830s. His home, known as “Forest Home,” was built in 1857. His son, Dr. James E. Gibson purchased the woods adjoining Forest Home and, with his wife, Ellen D. King of Kingston, Mississippi, built “Tanglewood” along Chambers Road in 1880.
Tanglewood was a plantation-style property, consisting of a “Main House” surrounded by other dwellings on the property occupied by members of the Gibson family. The property was a farmstead. The 1893 Survey Township Map (see above) shows the Gibson estate stretching generally from what today is Lilac Drive as the eastern boundary to the western boundary of the Gibson Elementary School property, along the south side of Chambers Road (the northern boundary) to a southern boundary bordered by Forest Home Drive and New Bethlehem Cemetery. The holdings were substantial and included land that eventually became the Bissell Hills subdivision between Lilac Drive to the east and the railroad tracks to the west, Surrey Lane Fields, the Surrey Lane Corners subdivision east of Bellefontaine Road, the Green Acres subdivision west of Bellefontaine Road, the Bissell Hills subdivision south of Chambers Road and west of Bellefontaine Road, and Freidens Chapel, Gibson Elementary School and Tanglewood Park along Chambers Road.
As the years passed, cultivation of the land increased and grain, corn and wheat became the prominent crops. According to Betsy, the Gibson family leased portions of the property to other families, who farmed the land under sharecropper-type arrangements. Thus, from the original land grant, the number of smaller farms on the property grew until around 1950.
The Gibsons personified philanthropy in the community, small in number though it was. As pertaining to the Science Hill School and Riverview Gardens High School, their philanthropic activities included providing the land for the one-room school in Science Hill District 7 and awarding a four-year academic scholarship to Washington University to the highest ranking Senior from the Riverview Gardens High School Class of 1931. They also were original congregants of Bellefontaine Methodist Church, which dates back to 1854, and were instrumental in supporting the early growth and success of the Church. Betsy’s family continued to be active in Bellefontaine Methodist Church 100 years later while she was growing up in Bellefontaine Neighbors.
James E. and Ellen Gibson, Betsy’s great grandparents, had five children, four daughters and one son. Their son passed away at a young age, never having married. One of the daughters, Cora Rayburn Gibson, married Ernest Boyd in 1912. Cora and Ernest were Betsy’s grandparents. Legend has it that Ernest Boyd initially courted and proposed to one of Cora’s sisters. When she turned down his marriage proposal, Ernest turned his attentions to Cora and asked for her hand in marriage. Desiring to be absolutely sure of her decision, Cora retreated to Europe for the better part of a year to consider her prospects. From the continent, she finally wrote Ernest that she accepted his offer of marriage and then returned to Tanlgewood to marry two years before the Great War.
Cora and Ernest - Everlasting LOVE. PHOTO PROVIDED BY BETSY PECKRON GUINN
Ernest and Cora settled into married life at Tanglewood and continued to live there for many decades. Betsy remembers them as exceedingly kind, generous and welcoming. In 1941, they gifted 4.5 acres of land to the Riverview Gardens School District for Gibson Elementary School in memory of James E. and Ellen Gibson. Gibson School was built and opened in 1953. She also remembers them as educated and enlightened. Ernest was one of the first CPAs in the St. Louis area. He also spearheaded the development of the charming Green Acres and Surrey Lane Corners neighborhoods off of Bellefontaine Road. Betsy retains a copy of the Plat that he commissioned for Green Acres.
Betsy’s mother, Margaret Louise Boyd, was born in 1919 and was adopted by Cora and Ernest as a baby. She attended John Burroughs School in St. Louis County but was “kicked out” due to “boy trouble.” She graduated from St. Joseph’s Academy. A bit of a rebel as a young woman, with a mind of her own, she met the greatest and unquestionably, best, dancer in St. Louis—Jim Peckron. While all the other women wanted to dance with Jim, Margaret wanted to marry him! Jim and and Margaret had two children, a son, Jamie, and a daughter, Betsy (our classmate), born September 17, 1951. The Peckron family lived at 1072 Chambers Road with Ernest and Cora Boyd until Betsy was six years of age.
At that time, the Peckrons moved to a new home at 20 Green Acres Road. By the time we attended East Jr. High, they had moved to a newly constructed split-level home at 1122 Chambers Road. I remember going to a pajama party at that house in 7th grade. While we were at RGHS, the Peckrons built a new home on a secluded lot in Green Acres at 9970 Lochiel Lane and welcomed the Class of 1969 with open arms. We built our Junior and Senior Floats (the Little Brown Jug Winners) in the garage of that home. What a blast! And don’t forget, we built our Sophomore Float at John Winkelmeier's home in Green Acres.
Building the Senior Float in Betsy's garage: ECHOES 1969. From left - Betsy, Susan Meyers (kneeling), Cheryl Niebur and Linda Bergmeyer in shadows (I think), and Doug Allen in the white shirt. I am not sure who the guy on the right is. Help!
In 1956, the Peckrons built their first cabin at the Lake of the Ozarks, where they always enjoyed their entire summers with family and friends. As routine would have it, Betsy left for the Lake the day after the last day of school and returned to St. Louis the day before the first day of school. At age 51, Jim retired and he and Margaret sold the Lochiel Lane home where we had many great memories building our Homecoming Floats. The Lochiel Lane home was the last piece of the property originally owned by the Gibson/Boyd/Peckron family over a period that spanned 140 years.
They moved to the Lake and built a home across the water from Tan-Tar-A. One morning, after breakfast, Jim told Margaret he was not feeling well and retired to the bedroom to rest. It was May 1, 1977, and he never awoke. A year later, on July 5, 1978, Margaret passed. The loss of her parents was devastating for Betsy. So full of life and all of its possibilities. Flush with friends, fun and festivities. Loving parents. We are so sorry you lost both of your parents when you were so young and we extend our sympathy to you even now.
And what became of the Main House at Tanglewood? Freidens Evangelical and Reformed Church (UCC) purchased the home, together with 3.6 acres of Tanglewood land, and built a church, while preserving the august Main House. Many of you attended Freidens Chapel while growing up. My dear friend, Sandy Elmer Williams, was a devoted member, even during most of her adult life. Her love of Freidens Chapel had settled in her core.
Cora Rayburn Boyd, Betsy’s grandmother, passed in 1963 when Betsy was 12 and her grandfather, Ernest Boyd, passed in 1972. Betsy’s brother, Jamie, passed from Parkinson’s disease in 2016. Today, Betsy shares a close relationship with her daughter, Carley.
The Gibson/Boyd/Peckron family history and heritage impacted the fabric of our collective and individual lives at Riverview Gardens High School and beyond in large and small ways. Thank you Betsy for allowing me to share your family story with the Class of 1969!
Main House - Tanglewood with Freidens Chapel in the background. PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS NAFFZIGER, ST. LOUIS PATINA
THE MODERN SCHOOL DISTRICT ERA
After World War II, St. Louis County moved into the era of the modern school district and by 1970 many of the common schools in St. Louis County had consolidated into 23 school districts, the number that currently stands today. Our parents got busy and the arrival of the Baby Boomers in suburbia resulted in exponential growth in school enrollments in the decades of the 1950s and 1960s.
TO BE CONTINUED ….
PREVIEW
COMING TO A RAMSITE
NEAR YOU!!!!!!
INVASION OF THE
BODY
SNATCHERS
THE NIGHTMARE THAT THREATENS THE WORLD!*#!
!<>!
Listen to me, please listen. If you don't, if you won't, if you fail to understand, then the same incredible terror that is manacing me will strike you!
They come from another world!
Spawned in the light years of space!
Unleashed to take over the bodies and soles of the Class of 1969!!
The Body Snatchers scaling Building 9!!!!! Take cover, Mr. Scholle!