Editor's note: This column was originally published May 25, 2016.
Graduation Day at Pea Ridge High School this year was a sight to behold! As people gathered at Blackhawk Stadium for the ceremonies, all the parking lots filled up. I say, "all" of the parking lots "filled up!" Cars filled not only the High School parking areas, but the Middle School parking lot, the church parking lot across the street, and the grassy areas between the parking lots. Cars were everywhere! Some people even parked in the ditch along the highway. I didn't look to the Primary School parking areas. They may have been full as well! I think all the moms and dads and grandpas and grandmas and aunts and uncles and cousins must have been there. But it didn't rain, and it was a great occasion.
Now that the new stadium is available for the commencement exercises, it seems great to be able to bring the celebration home again. Of course, moving inside in case of inclement weather would be a challenge with such a great attendance. To an old-timer like myself it seems almost unreal to have to go the the University of Arkansas facilities in Fayetteville to hold our high school commencement exercises. But that has been necessary for the past several years.
I'm reminded of how my mother used to tell about the rural schools in this part of the county coming to Pea Ridge to the old college building to hold their graduation ceremonies. Even schools affiliated with Bentonville, such as her own Valley View School, would come into Pea Ridge to take advantage of the large auditorium in the old Academy building. There they would hold their commencement exercises along with several other similar small schools.
The old Pea Ridge College Building had a nice auditorium on the second floor of the south addition. The south addition was constructed in 1887 when the school was expanding and beginning to offer college-level instruction in conjunction with the University of Arkansas. To reach the auditorium, one would enter the building at center front, climb the great stairs and walk left to the auditorium. Just why auditoriums in that day were located upstairs is a mystery to me; but our college building was not unique in that respect. The Cane Hill College also had a similar upstairs auditorium. Their upstairs auditorium still exists today.
Our new 1930 Pea Ridge School building also had a nice auditorium when it was first built. Our auditorium in the new building was on the ground floor across the center front of the building. The stage was at its west end. The auditorium was much used in the 1930s and 1940s, since there was no sizable community building in town otherwise. The auditorium was the place for school plays, musical performances, community meetings, elections and school commencement exercises. Baccalaureate programs were normally held in the local churches in those days, but commencement exercises were held in the school auditorium. This continued until about 1953, when school growth and changing ways of utilizing the building led to moving all large assembly programs to the school gym, and adding room dividers to separate the old auditorium space into classrooms. The raised platform stage then became the high school library. From that time on, to my knowledge, until around 2005, the current school gym always served as the place for graduation programs.
I'm fascinated with the word "commencement," as used to describe school graduation programs. Often people have thought of graduation as a milestone saying that now you have "finished" school, now you are "educated," so now you know everything you need for living your regular life and you can just go on out there now and do it. The interesting thing about the word, to me, is that "to commence" doesn't mean "to finish," it means "to begin." Commencement is not a "finishing up," it is a "starting out!"
In my own experience, I had about 20 years of formal education, including college and graduate school. But as I reflected on those years, especially the high school and college years, it seemed to me that those were years of learning to learn, learning how to learn, learning to appreciate learning, how to apply learning and how to continue learning as we pursue a lifetime of growing and maturing.
Many of us are very grateful that today we are celebrating the graduation of a large senior class from Pea Ridge High School, one of the finer schools in Arkansas, and that as the years have gone by our Pea Ridge School District has grown vastly in numbers, in facilities and in academic strength.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@ centurytel.net , or call 621-1621.
General News on 05/13/2020