Normandy High School is a public high school located in Wellston, St. Louis County, Missouri that is part of the Normandy School District.
History
The following information was provided by Wayne Brasler, Normandy School District historian who has written numerous research papers on the District and who produces and publishes the Normandy High School Alumni newspaper. Mr. Brasler has an extensive collection of Normandy School District histories, publications and Normandy High School newspapers and yearbooks and all the information here comes from those documents. Upon his death, the entire collection will go to the Missouri Historical Society. Normandy started a high school at Lincoln Elementary School in Pagedale early its history but it did not last beyond a year. Then in 1907 a high school was started in the former Washington Elementary School on St. Charles Rock Road but only one class graduated when the school closed in 1911. In 1923, the district again opened a school, this time on property purchased from the Eden Theological Seminary. For its first year, the high school shared the ornate four-story main building with Eden students. Plans by William B. Ittner for a California-style collegiate campus with a central quadrangle were implemented shortly after. The school opened as a combined junior high school and senior high school, with six levels from 7th through 12th grades. Plans also called for adding the first two years of college. This plan was realized in a way forty years later with the opening of the Normandy Residence Center, which became the University of Missouri-St. Louis. A vocational building and gymnasium, also designed by Ittner, were added in 1929. The vocational building remains as West Hall. The gymnasium, with curved, amphitheater-style seating, was renowned in the area for its architecture.
The founders of the high school had the goal of creating the "ideal high school". The founders embraced an educational concept called "functional education," which meant educating young people to assume their place in the democracy as intelligent, educated, civically involved, ethical people. The curriculum was based on life skills; for example, gaining a lifetime liking for reading, a lifetime passion for learning. From the school's beginning it attracted subject specialists who gained nationwide fame, notably Wendell Shay in science, Esther Goff in English, Elizabeth Schneider in modern dance, Helen Dunbar in square dancing, and Mary Still in journalism. Classroom teaching was largely modeled on John Dewey's beliefs in learning by doing and relating the school to the community outside the school and, furthermore, making the school the center of the community. Lectures and tests based on student feeding the lectures back to the teacher were bypassed for hands-on projects, panel discussions, research projects and experiences outside the school. During many periods in the school's history, homework time was provided within class periods. Early in the history, the school established a longer school day to provide meeting time for school organizations. Normandy High was a so-called "lighthouse" school, with its programs the subject of numerous articles in The School Review and other educators' publications and of panels at high-profile places such as the University of Chicago.
Several changes to the original layout of the school were made during the 1940s and 1950s. The Garage, erected in the 1940s with a bus garage below and classrooms above, remains as North Hall. The school opened one of the first St. Louis County high school pools in 1948. Due to large enrollment, a separate junior high school was planned and built in 1949; however, a fire damaged the original junior high school building that year, and while construction was ongoing on the new building, classes were held in two sessions a day. Prior to the 1950s, the campus also included a large lake and forest area, and the school retained faculty residences inherited from Eden in which the Normandy School District superintendent and some teachers lived. The original seminary building was replaced by Central Hall in 1959; the large, Ittner-designed gymnasium was demolished and replaced by the circular Viking Hall.
Community
The school serves 24 separate municipalities in St. Louis County including unincorporated areas. The district encompasses an economically depressed region of St. Louis County including industrial areas such as iron works and scrapyards. The municipalities served are:
- Bellerive
- Bel-Nor
- Bel-Ridge
- Beverly Hills
- Charlack
- Cool Valley
- Glen Echo Park
- Greendale
- Hanley Hills
- Hillsdale
- Normandy
- Northwoods
- Norwood Court
- Pagedale
- Pasadena Hills
- Pasadena Park
- Pine Lawn
- St. John
- Uplands Park
- Velda City
- Velda Village
- Vinita Park
- Vinita Terrace
- Wellston
Activities
For the 2013â€"2014 school year, the school offered 17 activities approved by the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA): baseball, boys and girls basketball, sideline cheerleading, boys and girls cross country, dance team, 11-man football, music activities, girls soccer, softball, speech and debate, girls swimming and diving, boys and girls track and field, girls volleyball, and wrestling. In addition to its current activities, Normandy students have won several state championships, including:
- Baseball: 1953
- Boys basketball: 1951
- Boys golf: 1936, 1949, 1950, 1957
- Boys soccer: 1973
- Boys swimming and diving: 1952, 1954
- Boys track and field: 1974
- Girls track and field: 1986
- Wrestling: 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940
In addition, the school newspaper, The Courier, was one of the top-ranked papers in the nation from 1940 through 1958 and continued as a prominent high school paper into the 1980s. The yearbook, The Saga, was nationally prominent in the 1940s through the early 1960s and pioneered many high school yearbook features, including detailed classroom coverage, chronologically-organized volumes and during World War II sections devoted to graduates serving in the armed forces.
Notable alumni
- Dean Baker, college football player and sports executive
- Gordon Lee Baum, CEO of right-wing white nationalist group, Council of Conservative Citizens
- Carl Daniels, Professional boxer
- Wayne Goode, Missouri state legislator
- Ruth Guerri, Playboy Centerfold
- Laurence Maroney, National Football League player
- Tony Pearson, Mr. World and Mr. Universe body building contestant
- Robert A. Young, U.S. Representative Missouri
References
