28-01-2025
Westminster High School's 125-year history, by the numbers
Westminster High School has a storied 125-year history, which Steve Bowersox, a history teacher at the school, brought to light for an audience of about 70 people on an overcast Saturday afternoon at Grace Lutheran Church in Westminster.
Bowersox, 61, of Westminster, presented what he described as a 'light history' of Westminster for nearly an hour, with plenty of humor and charming anecdotes, followed by comments and stories from audience members with connections to the school. Many attendees enjoyed perusing school yearbooks from as long ago as the 1920s, and other artifacts on display.
Westminster High School opened in 1899, in a building at the corner of Green and Center streets. A new art deco style building was constructed to house the school in 1936, at 121 Longwell Ave., which became East Middle School in 1971. Westminster alumni from those years were saddened to see the beautiful building demolished so a new East Middle School could be constructed on the same property in 2023. Frances Miller, a social studies teacher who taught from 1936 to 1972, was the only person to work in all three buildings, Bowersox told the crowd.
'There are so many mentions of the lockers in the articles because they had cloak rooms back at the old building,' Bowersox said.
Westminster's first cohort met in the unoccupied City Hotel of Westminster after construction of the original schoolhouse was delayed, and five weeks of school were canceled, to be made up in the summer because the building had no heat, according to an 1899 newspaper article in the Democratic Advocate.
Seven students graduated in the Class of 1900. There were 344 graduates in the Class of 2024, though graduating classes could be above 500 before a second public high school in Westminster, Winters Mill, opened in 2002.
High school attendance was not commonplace until the 1900s, Bowersox said, and just 14% of Americans had completed high school in 1910. Public schools rose in popularity, in part, to help 'Americanize' children of recent immigrants, who arrived in the country in large numbers at this point in history.
'It took longer for children of color, girls, and children with special needs to gain access to free public education,' Bowersox said. 'Gradually, more states accepted responsibility for providing universal public education and embedded this principle in their state constitutions.'
Mike Squirrel became the first Black student to graduate in 1965, more than a decade after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ordered school desegregation. Bowersox said the school system found a Black girl with whom he could learn line dancing in junior high school physical education classes so that he didn't have to dance with a white student. The Westminster native died in Randallstown in 2016 at age 68.
'It took us a little while to get this figured out,' Bowersox said. 'We've gotten better.'
Squirrel was well-liked by the Class of 1965, said classmate Peggy James, 77, of Westminster, who is also known by her maiden name of Hutchinson.
'We all got along with him,' James said, 'and he was voted the king of sports. We accepted him, but I heard many years later that he didn't come to any of our reunions or anything because he always felt left out, yet we all accepted him.'
LuVear Owens was the school's first Black employee, a janitor who worked there from 1951 to 1966. Westminster High's first Black faculty member, English teacher Daisy Harris, taught at the school from 1966 to 1971.
Westminster had no Class of 1950 because that was the year 12th grade was added. 'The greatest part about that was that we were the seniors for two years,' alumna Alice Lockard, 91, told the audience, 'and that's true of all the county schools, but it was fantastic.'
Lockard said she remembers high school fondly, especially the school's spirited energy on Friday nights during football season.
'It was a great time,' Lockard said. 'It was the second home to most of us kids because we're talking about the era when we had black-and-white televisions coming into being, and not every home even had one of those, so school was very important to us, and WHS was very, very special.'
The owl has seemingly been the school's mascot since the late 1920s when the school yearbook changed its name from 'The Mirror' to 'The Owl.' James said she designed a flag for the school in 1964, but the design may have been lost when Westminster eliminated flag-bearing majorettes from its marching band.
Bowersox said he became interested in the high school's role in World War II, which snowballed into learning about the history of the school comprehensively. Schoolhouses were often used as community centers during the 1900s, and war-era Westminster offered night classes for residents to learn skills like welding, so they could better contribute to the war effort.
'During World War II, Westminster High School became a very, very important site,' Bowersox said. 'It's the biggest place around with a microphone, so if you've got information to get out to people, it's where a lot of meetings were held.'
John Seaman, 76, who was principal from 2001 to 2008, said Bowersox's presentation was insightful. Seaman was originally responsible for hiring the history teacher.
'I was not a native to Carroll County, so I didn't grow up here, didn't go to school there,' Seaman said. 'Much of that I didn't know, so I found it extremely interesting to know the history of it and thrilled with what Steve's done and with what the historical society does. You need to know your roots.'
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Steve Bowersox, historian and Career Coordinator at Westminster High, speaks about famous Westminster High alumni as the Historical Society of Carroll County celebrates the 125-year history of Westminster High School at Grace Lutheran Church on Saturday. (Brian Krista/Staff)
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Seaman was principal of a school that was in danger of feeling divided, he said, as he was in charge of Westminster when Winters Mill High School began. The principal's most important objective was to foster a sense of unity and defuse tensions among faculty, some of whom chose or were selected to work at Winters Mill the following year.
Bowersox's presentation was part of the Box Lunch Talk speaker series from the Carroll County Historical Society, which also celebrates the county's 188th birthday. The series will continue on Feb. 18 at noon with 'Six Decades of Entrepreneurship: Observations & Opportunities' by local businessperson Bill Brown, at 21 Carroll St., Westminster (Grace Lutheran Church).
Historical Society of Carroll County Executive Director Jason Illari said the talk showed that history informs our sense of community today, and that relatively recent history can be as meaningful as things that happened a very long time ago.
'Steve is a perfect example of how history can be presented in a story-telling way,' Illari said, 'which keeps people engaged and having fun. It doesn't always have to be a dry lecture that goes on and on and on. And he's a history teacher at the school, so he's a professional, but I hope that a big takeaway for people is that they can see that history can be fun, it can be engaging, and it's not all about dates. It's more about the stories that we tell.'
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