- The Yellowjacket is the insect Yellowjacket who is black and yellow, okay?

The insect is one word.

(insect buzzing) When I went to find an image of a real yellow jacket, I found a British paper wasp whose image it looks exactly like the Yellowjacket that we see flying around in the summertime in hot weather.

So the Yellowjacket, the insect Yellowjacket, is what we were supposed to be mascots.

We were a mascot, the insect was our mascot.

Yellow jacket would refer to the Anderson high school band.

It was the band who had the yellow, the bright yellow jacket, and all references, um-kay, to yellow jackets, um-kay, be they with the space or without the space, it's always that insect.

(dramatic marching band music) In the late 1800's, Black people lived all over Austin.

There were little communities, you know, of black people in the north side, east side, west side, but they dissipated because of what was really zoning laws that caused black people to be confined in a section of Austin that was east of East Avenue, which is I-35 today.

There was a conscious effort to concentrate the Black residences of Austin, Texas to the east side by all aspects of state and city government back in the 20's and the 30's.

Years later, closing the Anderson, you know, sorta was counter to that.

You close Anderson, I mean, you're creating the Anderson High School as a result of all of the efforts, you know, to congregate all of the Black people in the Austin area on the east side, and then you close Anderson.

(locker doors slamming) - In the first grade, my father was a principal of a school in Gatesville, Texas.

And then we moved to Austin when I was in second grade.

So I went to LL Campbell from the second grade through the sixth, and then Kealing, and then Anderson.

- I was born and raised in Austin.

I attended Blackshear Elementary, Kealing Junior High, and graduated from the original L.C.

Anderson High School in 1955 - I had two brothers and an older sister.

They both graduated from Anderson, the original Anderson high school.

And what I expected was to follow in their footsteps.

- I would say that there was, there was a continuity because when you entered school, it wasn't long before some teacher would say, oh yes, I know your mother.

I know your father.

Oh yes, I know your uncle.

And that just seemed to be helpful.

- So we had something to look up as little elementary kids, going to the games with our older siblings or relatives and watching the Yellow jackets on Friday nights, you know, black and gold.

I mean, that was a big thing in the community.

- So when you grow up in that type of community, you know, everything was about football because that was very popular when I was growing up.

You know, to be an Anderson Yellow jacket was something special, you know, and everybody wanted to be a Anderson Yellow jacket when I was growing up.

Like athletics, the music was really good at Anderson.

And, you know, we didn't appreciate the teachers like we should have.

Nowadays they, I have a grandson, and he walks around with this turntable, and he puts something on that, and he wiggles it back and forth.

I said, now, why didn't you take music when you were in high school.

He said, oh, I just never thought about it.

I say, "It would be good if you knew something "about what you were doing."

(laughing) - I wanted to be a part of everything.

I was a busybody.

I was a member of the Student Government Association.

I ran for president one year and then found out later on that my husband voted against me.

We were in the same class.

I almost didn't forgive him for that one.

- To be a Yellow jacket, it was, it just made you belong to the neighborhood, you know.

If you, if anyone asked you what school you go to, I go to Anderson High School, you know, and it was just, I mean, it was just exciting to me to get, you know, to get the opportunity to say that you attended Anderson High school.

I mean, the short time I was a Yellow jacket, it was great.

I enjoyed it.

- You know, these kids got a top-rate education here, and I'm about the younger generation now, those that finished from here and went here.

They had good teachers, teachers were concerned about the children, and not just from an academic standpoint.

They were concerned about them as individuals also.

And, and it just makes a big difference.

You know, you care for your own.

- Our teachers were determined to make sure we were successful.

And I think that's what's missing today, but they were, they were the ones that made sure we got the good grades.

If we were falling behind, they would notify our parents quickly and make sure that we got the help that we needed.

So there was no failure at Anderson.

- When I first became aware of the fact that it was closing, it was like losing a close friend or a family member because we all knew what the original Anderson High School meant to us.

It was like a member, the school itself was like a member of your family.

And to lose that, it was tough for a lot of us.

- Anybody who went to Anderson, if they put on their death list what was one of the best things that occurred to you in your life?

And that would be, I attended Anderson High School.

- Anderson won't be over until the last one of us passes away.

And that was class of '71.

But what we're trying to do is make sure that our children keep it going.

So I'm not concerned about the story dying out.

There was just, there was just too much glory in the story of Anderson High.

(upbeat music) - The first Anderson High School was on the corner of Olive and Curve.

And the construction of that school was around about 1905.

In September of 1909, that school opened up as E.H. Anderson High School.

Leading up to that date, one of the school board members suggested that the name of the school be E.H. Anderson after L.C.

Anderson's brother who was the principal of the school that was on or had been the principal of the school that was on the corner of 11th street and San Marcus.

In 1930, late 20's, early 30's timeframe, they built the next Anderson institution, which was on Pennsylvania Avenue.

And L.C.

Anderson was still the principal.

L.C.

Anderson passed away in 1938, and so E.H. Anderson was renamed L.C.

Anderson by the school board almost immediately.

And so the institution is, has been L.C.

Anderson ever since.

(upbeat music) - General and I are both native Austinites.

He grew up in Clarksville.

I grew up on Washington Avenue which is now SL Davis Avenue.

We met in 1949 when we both went to, I'm sorry, 1947, when each one of us entered a Kealing as freshmen.

I graduated from Blackshear Elementary, and he came from Olive Street.

And because he lived in Clarksville, he had to ride the city bus every day.

Kealing was located across the street then from Greater Mount Zion, a Baptist church.

It was full block, and then half a block west of Kealing's campus was the old Anderson High School.

So it was like moving just half a block as a middle school student to the Anderson High School.

In high school, I was the one who did all the talking, and he was sorta quiet.

But through the years he started talking, and he was good at sports, but he was also very involved, involved in golf.

He started playing golf at the age of about 11 or 12 because he was a caddy.

The municipal golf course integrated in, I think he said '47 or '48.

And then through the years, he's continued to play golf.

And that's been one of the loves of his life.

When we went to E.H. Anderson in 1949, basically that was the high school, that was the Black school, the high school for all of Austin.

That's the reason the students who came from St. John or from Clarksville or from South Austin all had to attend that one high school.

(upbeat music) Anderson high school was the pride of the East Austin community.

We were good with sports, had several state championships.

We had some outstanding football players, but we also had some outstanding basketball players, but to me the pride of Anderson High School was the band under the direction of B.L.

Joyce.

The band had been in existence probably since the late 30's.

And I was told that Mr. Joyce came to Austin, and his trade was that of a tailor.

And I was also told that he made the first band uniforms for the band.

The band sort of ruled the roost at Anderson.

You know, if you were a band member, students looked up to you.

But the one thing we had more than anything else was discipline.

Mr. Joyce did not allow you to be late.

He did not allow you to be unprepared.

And he would quickly replace you if you made any kind of mistake, a faux pas, knowing that they were against his rules and regulations.

Love the man.

- I studied under Mr. Joyce.

There was some more of us who were taking piano, and Mr. Joyce was resourceful to the point that he would find music.

He would find compositions that involved both band and piano.

So some of us who were taking private lessons had the opportunity to play with the band or sometimes even be featured as a piano soloist with the band.

And that was truly inspiring and something I still haven't forgotten.

- Anderson High School started the Prairie View UIL band contest along with two other schools.

And at one time there was no question that Anderson High School was the best African-American band in the whole state of Texas.

- We won state Championships more often than not.

When we went to contests at Prairie View, usually in the spring, the few times that we lost, we thought it was a calamity.

I mean, the world was going to come to an end.

We weren't going to survive to the next day because Mr. Joyce was disappointed and so were we.

- I remember one day he looked at me and he said, sister, most of the young ladies were addressed by sister, I know now sister and brother's right there, but way back in his day, he would call the young men mostly brother, and the young ladies, sister.

Or even Miss and Mister.

But he told me, he said, sister, we've been working on your saxophone lessons, and you're still insisting on crossing your knees when you play, and crossing your knees and playing the saxophone, just don't, those are two things that just don't go together.

And I thought that was a, now I would say that was a really succinct observation, and yet a very kind way.

So I kinda let the saxophone go and stuck more with the piano.

- Now I told you about the guy that, you know, was nominated for the Academy Award for "Lady Sings the Blues."

And a quick funny joke about him was he called home and he says, "Y'all get to put our Christmas party together."

And so they had the party.

And so he comes home from Detroit, and he rings the doorbell, and they opened the door.

And these three young ladies walk in the party, and everybody just goes nuts, you know.

He brought The Supremes home with him.

So that's pretty good story, and it's true too.

(upbeat music) - He always played the March music.

And the reason for that was because we were a marching band.

I remember growing up in East Austin, and probably everyone else who grew up in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s, September, October, November we'd be awakened in the morning by the sound of the band out on the field practicing.

Mr. Patterson became band director, Mr. Alvin Patterson became band director following the retirement of Mr.

B.L., Benjamin L. Joyce.

B.L.

Joyce was the band director my ninth grade year at Anderson.

And he retired that year.

My 10th grade year at Anderson was Mr. Patterson's first year.

So I had the benefit of playing in Mr. Joyce's last year and Mr. Patterson's first year.

Mr. Patterson himself was one of Mr. Joyce's band students.

He came in, his teaching technique was a whole lot different from Mr. Joyce's.

He was not quite the disciplinarian that Mr. Joyce was.

And he, his choice of selection of music for us to play was a little different.

Mr. Patterson played marching, had us play march music, but he had us play music that was more contemporary.

Some of it was rock and roll.

Some of it was overtures and symphonic music.

So we had to get adjusted, you know, to Mr. Patterson's choice, of select music selections for us to play.

- I remember when I was a little girl standing on my porch on 12th street, two doors down from the Harlem, and you could hear the band at halftime.

And I would say to myself, I really want to be in that band.

So fortunately, I got a chance to do that.

(upbeat music) Anderson was invited to be in the parade, going down Congress Avenue.

And at that time it was a big deal for a Black school to be part of a city-wide parade.

Woolworths was a cornerstone of the downtown business.

And of course they wouldn't let you eat at the counter there, but I had an incident where my zipper broke, and my fellow majorette had to pin me up in Woolworth's restroom, and we were watched the whole time but that's okay.

We got through that, and I marched down Congress Avenue.

- Juneteenth maybe, or Armistice day and then the parades downtown where the brilliant gold jackets quite noticeable as we, they marched up Congress Avenue.

The ranks were so wide that people standing on both sides of the street had to back up a little bit to make room for us to pass by.

That was impressive.

It was really a matter of pride, you know, to be in that band, marching, you know, playing a march, you know, coming up Congress Avenue.

Even though we had to read the music and keep our ranks and files straight and dodge horse dung, you know, in between steps.

Because for some reason they usually put us at the rear of the parade, but we did it.

And we kinda like were a star attraction, you know, because we were different.

You know, we were a Black school and, but we had an amount of showmanship.

- What was the parade they used to have out at UT?

Oh, I don't know.

And I remember we were in that parade, and they were throwing beer cans in the tubas as they marched by.

(laughing) And my friend Freeman Andrews, he'd have to stop every so often and empty the beer cans out of his tuba.

But anyway, we had a great time.

- I was in the band, and I was playing football.

So I had to do, make a transition in high school.

You can't do both at that time.

Coaches didn't like that.

So I would go to, right before I learned what I really was at the 10th grade, I got to high school, and it's summertime.

We got ready to start marching band.

I'd march in the band, and then football summer practice started.

I had to get out of band and start going to football practice.

So I had to make a decision that 10th grade, after the first half of the summer, I made a transition said I want to play football.

(drumming) - That was the last team at Anderson to win the state championship, and I was on the B team that year.

And I came up to the varsity the following years.

Mr. Timmons' team, he won three state championships '56, '57 and '61.

When my dad played, the head coach was W.E.

Pigford, and they won the state championship in 1942.

Now, when you look at the history of Anderson, Anderson won four state championships.

They played in seven.

They won four out of seven.

They won 13 district championships.

University of Texas, they created the UIL in 1910 for the white house schools for the state of Texas.

And so they came back in 1920, and they created Texas Interscholastic League for Colored Schools.

That's how it started out.

They played the games down at Prairie View A&M College at that time.

So the people from the community always named it the Prairie View Interscholastic League.

It formally changed in 1940.

Prior to that, there was no playoff system.

Just about any team in the state of Texas could basically call themself the champion if they had a winning season.

Well, in 1940, Pat Patterson organized the PVIL with a playoff system that would name only one champion that would come out of four different districts.

And so it officially became the Prairie View Interscholastic League.

- My coach, and he was one of my true heroes at Anderson High School, W. Pigford.

We never had new equipment until I was a senior.

We had hand-me-down football equipment from Austin High School.

Every piece of what we played in was second-hand.

Like I said, when I was a senior, that was the first time we had brand new football equipment.

And we were successful in spite of all of that.

We didn't have a weight room, the football team.

We had nothing that we could exercise with, but we were powerful.

Our kids were fantastic.

- You won't believe this, but my brother was much, much older than I am.

He played football in 1959.

His name was Joe Wade.

He finished from Anderson, and then he went to Texas Southern University, and he finished there.

And he got married to a young lady in Houston.

But he was gonna be drafted by the Dallas Cowboys, but his wife was totally against it.

- So I was very active in Anderson, very active in a lot of things.

I was voted Mr. Esquire at the time.

That's Mr. Anderson High with the court and the Miss.

Anderson High in the class of '70.

And I was voted most enthusiastic or something because I have a lot of energy.

(laughing) I was a high energy guy and still am at my old ripe age of 66.

- Everybody have their cliques, you know, in every school.

I didn't have a clique.

I just liked being there.

I'd play with everybody.

We'd have fun.

I had, and I did not have a clique.

I just enjoyed the whole scenario and all the, all the good times.

I did enough to get out of school.

Okay, I don't want y'all to think that I was a D-student.

I got a, I did enough to get out of school, okay, but I wasn't an A-student.

The only thing I could do, I was not very athletic.

I wasn't good at football, baseball, or basketball.

One thing I could do, I could run.

And one of our coaches told my father, Donald needs to be out there trying to run track.

He's really fast.

Everybody I raced I beat.

And dad said, dad said, you need to go out there and run track.

You might be the next Jesse Owens.

I said, no, dad, I don't want to do that.

I just didn't wanna, I didn't want the notoriety.

I just wanted to be like I was, so I never ran track.

I still think what would have happened if I had ran track, but I did nothing.

Just had fun and got by.

(crowd talking and laughing) - I used to sit right there in the front row.

- Really?

- Miss Frazier's class, my homeroom teacher.

- We had an English teacher whom I did not like but who taught us a lot of things, and that was Miss Lucile Frazier.

We learned to appreciate "Beowulf."

We learned poems.

We learned Bible verses.

She taught us a lot of things about appreciating English.

- In the end, she most certainly was a person who brought out the best in me.

She saw things in me that I didn't see in myself.

- They made us appreciate being who we were.

We knew that we lived in East Austin and that we were not always getting the best of supplies.

Our schools were not always as up to date as they did over at Austin High School.

- We never had new schoolbooks.

They were hand-me-downs from the white schools.

I never thought about it.

You know, I really didn't think about it until after until I got grown.

Then I said, man, this is not right.

This is, yeah, I just didn't.

- But what we were missing in the supplies, the material things, we received from our teachers in attention.

They thought that everybody could learn and made you think you could learn.

You didn't frown upon anybody because they were less than you.

And that was the thing that made us come to appreciate Anderson.

We knew that when we went to Anderson, when we went away anywhere else, and we told people that we attended Anderson High School, we were somebody.

So when AISD finally decided that they were going to build us a new facility, we were excited.

We didn't think that it was gonna be as good as Austin High School because the old, the old Anderson structure was crumbling.

But our graduation ceremony of 1953 was held in this facility, in this gymnasium.

The rest of the school had not, they had not finished construction, but they wanted to honor us by allowing us to have our ceremony here in this gymnasium.

And for that, we were very appreciative, but they would not let us go into any other part of this facility.

So it did not open until the fall or the spring of the next year.

(upbeat music) Well, I came from the old Anderson to the new Anderson.

Yes, I did.

And, you know, it was new, new school.

Yeah, it was nice when we came here.

Basically our teachers were here, the same ones that we had.

So we had a good education through it all.

- I never thanked any of my teachers from grade school all the way up through high school.

It's a complete regret.

But the fact that I went to all of those schools, Blackshear, Kealing, graduated from Anderson, I am so grateful, and I'm so blessed to have been able to attend all of those schools.

- Oh, now I shouldn't say this, but I worked at, and they would let Black kids, you know, not behave, and they'd let them sit in the office and not get the hours.

And then they say, oh, you missed a class too many times.

You can't pass, and that kind of not encouraged kids, you know, that kind of thing.

And that's not Anderson.

You know, if they had to drag you out by your ear, you were going to class, and you were not going to disrupt it.

You know, that kind of thing.

So we were lucky, and I never regretted going to a segregated school.

(upbeat music) - In 1955, the Austin Independent School District integrated all of the junior and senior high schools immediately.

In 1956, I transferred from Anderson after being there for two years to Austin High, and my last two years were there.

By then I had a driver's license, and sometimes I drove my mom's car across town.

Sometimes I rode with a friend who had a car.

In my class there were about 10, 11 or 12 black students out of a class of about 460 or 470 total.

So put that in perspective.

And most of the classes that we attended were, we were the only ones in the class.

So that was kind of different.

My intentions for going to Austin High was that I had always wanted to attend the University of Texas.

I wanted the experience of being in an integrated class with integrated students and faculty prior to going to UT as opposed to going there and experiencing that, you know, just right off the bat so to speak.

After graduation from Austin High, I was among a handful of Black students that integrated the University of Texas.

- I am actually a product of integration because my father was the first black principal of a high school, integrated high school in Texas, Central High in San Angelo.

So he was always of the attitude that we needed to integrate to be more successful.

And that's really the reason why my family moved from San Angelo to Austin to be able to be a part of the University of Texas and have those opportunities.

But I have to say that my experience was, integration wasn't that great.

My brother and sister went to Austin High, and they were older.

I watched them, and I saw how they struggled with that, with integrating into that system.

So that's when I asked my parents to send me to Anderson and not to Austin High.

And so I made that choice, and I'm glad I did because we had everything we needed here.

We had the teachers, the books, the stores, the gas stations, the businesses, everything that was needed was right here.

So I didn't even have to go across town for anything.

So I was a fan of segregation.

- I went to Blackshear elementary school from the first grade to the sixth grade.

Then I went to Kealing Junior High for the seventh and eighth grade.

Now Kealing went to seventh, eighth and ninth grade.

I, and several of my friends within the neighborhood decided we wanted to be in high school.

So we opted to, it was just a handful of us from the neighborhood, opted to go to Johnston because we wanted to be in high school.

My mother and I had talked about it, not seriously until about midterm of my junior year at Johnston that she and I both agreed that I still lived with these people that I went to school with at Blackshear and Kealing.

They were still friends.

They were still neighbors.

My sister had graduated from L.C.

Anderson.

A lot of members of my family had graduated from L.C.

Anderson.

And we agreed together that I should graduate with my roots at L.C.

Anderson.

So I transferred to L.C.

Anderson, 1970 and obviously graduated in 1971, which was the last year that the school L.C.

Anderson was open.

When I transferred, I guess the Austin Independent School District tried to avoid busing.

So they launched a campaign for whites to go to Anderson, and to some of my surprise, a lot of whites came to Anderson, but I think on a national scale busing was the only option, and busing of blacks to white schools was the only option.

My school closed.

It closed as an all Black school in 1971.

I would have loved to go to an integrated school.

Would have longed to go to an integrated school.

My whole life has been integrated.

I started working when I was 12.

I worked with a diverse group of people, mainly white.

I didn't have a problem with that.

They didn't have a problem with me.

I would have liked to go into a school with those same conditions.

- Desegregation was more or less of the foundation of fair, equal.

Whereas integration, seemed to have infer more about intermingling or interfacing, interacting, but desegregation was fair but equal, equal but fair regardless of what the situation was.

I don't know if I'm stating that clearly, but I think most of us caught the concept of it, of the difference.

- The practice of integration in Austin was to me horrendous.

- You know, to just bring a different race, a color, a person, and plant them into a school, allowing them to come to the school, and cause integration, just to say you have integration there, it's not the answer.

- My kids couldn't get a quality education just sitting next to your kids.

That doesn't give you a quality education.

No, it was totally different, no.

- Austin was far behind a little town in Georgia.

Called Statesboro with its integration plan, and it dragged its feet for years.

The first year that our first born went to school, he went to a segregated school in Statesboro, but next year in 1962, I'm sorry, in '65, he and our daughter were the first ones to be integrated in the elementary schools.

So they started their integration with first grade and second grade.

And they moved up through the ranks in the elementary school system.

Austin came up with a strange plan.

They started integration top down.

They started at 12th grade.

They then went down to the 11th grade, and that's the way they integrated.

When we came back to Austin in 1966, our children was still in elementary school, but they were no longer to be integrated.

They went to Blackshear.

And their first question was, "Where all the white children?"

- Yeah, and they say, oh, we're gonna integrate everybody.

And everybody's gonna live happily ever.

Bye, it didn't work like that.

- You have to realize that most of these people had never crossed I-35.

They did not know what Anderson or what the African-American community looked like.

It was a mind full of stereotypes of what Blacks and Browns did, not what the reality was.

Well, of course I was in the courtroom when the judge ordered Anderson closed.

And we knew from the very beginning that if desegregation was going to take place, it was going to impact us more than them.

They were not about to close Austin high school and make those kids come to our schools.

So we knew that.

- Oh, yeah, talking about the closing of Anderson High School, it was well-meaning.

The feds came down and said, we're gonna do integration.

And I'm all for integration.

Yeah, of course.

But I just feel that there should have been another alternative.

What that alternative should have been, I don't know, but it really did, in my opinion, more harm than good because so many kids got left by the wayside.

So that's that.

- We've lost a whole generation.

We've lost a whole generation of kids.

We have.

- That was a, not only a punch in the gut to the community, all of that participated in what today is probably referred to as the gentrification of East Austin.

And the beginnings of that began to me with the closing of the old Anderson High School, the original L.C.

Anderson High School.

- '71 was a dysfunctional year for Anderson.

Everybody's spirit was pretty much killed knowing that that year was the last year.

And it was from students to faculty.

It was sad.

That's about my final observation of the years that I, a year and a half I spent at Anderson was seeing already depressed people distressed by further weights put on them.

That was totally unnecessary in my opinion.

And then to be forced to go get bused across town and deal with the violence associated with that was unfair.

- When we went to school on this certain day, I can't remember the exact day, but we were getting ready to go into the building, and there were chains on the doors, and we had no idea that that was our last day to attend, I mean, to ever go to that campus.

It was just locked down.

That was probably the same day that picture was taken because it was some of the students were sitting out on the steps.

Some of them sat on a car.

Some of them stood across the street under that big tree right there in front of Paul Thompson street.

I can't tell you why they did that because they didn't give us any notice or anything.

You know, for instance, they, those kids, we were sitting out there because we had personal things in our lockers.

I mean, it's not like they sent a note home to your parents and say, okay, this is the last day for your students at Anderson High School.

I wish I could find some document that gave that announcement, but there isn't one.

You know, this is the last day at Anderson High School, so make sure your students turn in all your books, and, you know, things like that.

To be honest with you, I don't even think I turned in my band uniform.

- The onus for integration was placed on the families in East Austin.

We had to be bused.

So we knew that we were going to have to get our kids on the bus early in the morning, and they wouldn't get home until late in the afternoon.

- It was terrible.

When they were getting off the buses at these schools.

They had to fight, my son had to fight every day out at McCallum, but 'cause they met 'em with sticks and clubs and stuff.

It was terrible, terrible.

- When I graduated, it was still segregated.

But a few years after that, busing started and everything.

That was a great thing.

It was a well-meaning thing, but a lot of kids dropped out.

They didn't want to be bused.

It is a cultural shock to a lot of people.

I'm going to school with white kids.

So a lot of people dropped out of school.

And I understand, I don't know because I never went to a white school, but I've heard that a lot of the teachers didn't have any high expectations for Black kids.

You know?

So it was pretty rough, I understand.

- You get on the bus, and you have to catch the bus in the mornings.

Sometimes the bus will be there on time, and then if it wasn't on time, you were considered tardy.

You know, you're getting writ up, going to the office, and things like that.

Just any little nitpicking thing.

And you just say, well, forget it.

I won't go to school today 'cause I'm not standing in his long line, you know, getting a permit to go back to class.

So it was just nitpicky stuff.

I don't know which way they could have done it, but it could have been a better way - Dissolve the school.

It goes away and act like it never existed.

Is that right?

Is that wrong?

- No one knew what was going on or what happened with anything at here period.

So nobody thought about the trophies and all of that, all of the memorabilia, that had not crossed anybody's mind.

What everybody was thinking about at that time was the actual closing of the schools.

Well, once I found out, the man called me then told to me that the trophies and things were there, and they had instructed him to dump them, to trash them, to burn them.

And I said, what?

And he repeated it.

And I say, I'll be right there.

And then the following school board meeting, I attended the school board, and I relayed to the board what was going on with the memorabilia.

And I said to them that the school was not closed by our choice.

So then you guys need to do something to find a place to store them.

- Berl Hancock was on the school board, or on the city council.

So I asked Berl if he knew any place.

In the back of Doris Miller, they had this storage facility, and he said we can give them the storage facility for 'em, and we can lock them up until they can claim them again.

That's the only way we saved because when they closed the school, they left the doors open, with guys going in and out taking furniture.

And the people across the street in the projects went through and these were gold trophies and things.

And they just took 'em.

- I would like to see all of the trophies that are now being warehoused at the Carver museum in the basement, I would like to see all of those old trophies being on exhibit there at the new Anderson High School.

But it's not going to be called new Anderson High School, but that's how we old exes gonna look at it.

It's on the same grounds.

There's gonna be a marker there.

So we'll look at it as being the new Anderson.

You know, I talked to my daughter about my days at Anderson High School.

You have to pass this information on because if you don't, it will die.

- Regardless to how you build up East Austin, it should always be something there that stands out that says, this is where the Yellow jackets marched down Rosewood Avenue, you know, parades down Congress Avenue.

It just, it should be a street name, Anderson Yellow jacket, so it will never be forgotten.

You know, that's my thought.

(upbeat music) - O.L.C.A.A.A was the name that was created by myself and Dorothy Hunter.

Dorothy Hunter was in my class.

In our 30th class reunion in 1988, we challenged all the rest of the classes to have a reunion, I should say an alumni association and reunion that involved all of the classes.

Such an organization that did that did not exist at the time.

Well, it took a while for me to sell the idea to fellow Anderson High exes.

A lot of times I called meetings, and there was one or two people that were there.

A couple of times I called a meeting, and I was the only one there.

And however, some of the people who attended began to come back, you know, because they didn't know me.

You know, because I was dealing with all the classes.

So about 4,500 names, I hand-entered myself, compiled the mailing list that we used to send notifications of the very first Anderson reunion in 19, I think it was in June of 1991.

And it was three days.

We had a picnic at the Richard Moyer park.

As far as the plan of action was we were going to do it again three years later.

So that was about it.

That was nothing in terms of an agenda, what we planned to do in between other than just to continue to pass the word that our organization and our endeavor is for real, that if you went to Kealing, or it didn't matter which elementary school you went to, what church you went to, what neighborhood you were out of, you knew you were going to go to Anderson.

It was a funnel to spit you out into the world.

And the alumni association exists to capture all of those remembrances and to project them as something that we as ex-Anderson students will not and should not ever forget.

(upbeat music) (crowd of people talking and laughing) ♪ AHS we love you ♪ ♪ Love you yes we do, do, do, ♪ ♪ So that our hearts sing out ♪ ♪ In exaltation for we know you are inspiration ♪ ♪ When the days have not been dreary ♪ ♪ We are going to prove our weary ♪ ♪ Let's here it for onward, upward, ♪ ♪ forward marching AHS!

♪ (cheering and clapping) (light flute music)