Lakeland Senior High School: Difference between revisions

Content deleted Content added

Inline

Revision as of 23:55, 4 March 2012

{{Infobox school | name = Lakeland Senior High School | image = | motto = Strive to achieve | established = 1889 | type = Public | principal = Tracy Collins | city = Lakeland, Florida | state = W.A | country = United States Of America | colours = Orange and Black | homepage = http://www.lakelandhighschool.com/

@@ Line 11: / Line 11: @@
 | colours     = Orange and Black
 | homepage    = http://www.lakelandhighschool.com/
-– 1899: The Early Years
-The United States
-The final years of nineteenth century were similar to the last decade of the twentieth with a major thrust towards technology. Then, however, the new technology consisted of the steam engine, the telephone, elevators, and sewing machines rather than computers, cell phones, and compact discs. Although the United States had become the industrial giant of the world, farm workers still outnumbered jobholders in all other industries combined. Steel made possible the first skyscraper —ten stories— in Chicago in 1884, and by 1892 skyscrapers had reached the supreme height of twenty-two stories. The opening of the Oklahoma Territory during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison was part of the greatest migration in American history, and during William McKinley’s term the destruction of the U.S.S Maine in the Havana harbor on February 15,1898, led to the Spanish-American War, the “splendid little war” promoted by the yellow journalism of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. In Victorian America beards were fashionable for men, and for women long hair, always primly pinned up. Favorite forms of entertainment included picnics and circuses: variety shows and forgettable dramas were presented by traveling troupes in town halls across the country.  It was a time of great optimism and the belief that anything could be achieved by a person with some education.
-Lakeland
-Early settlers in this area had names still familiar: Keen, Drane, Pipkin, Hollingsworth, Combee, Boswell, and Bryant. The founder of Lakeland was Abraham G. Munn, a successful Kentucky businessman who bought a large tract of land for five dollars an acre and sent his son to plat the community during the winter of 1883-84. Abraham Munn not only donated the central park to the community; he also paid out of his own pocket to build a railroad station to attract what was needed to make the community a success: transportation. The arrival of the railroad gave the new community the needed boost, and on January 1, 1885, a town meeting for the purpose of incorporation was held. Of the thirty-four voting citizens twenty-two were in favor and twelve were opposed.
-Proudly flying the American flag, the ship carrying Roosevelt’s Rough Riders left from the Port of Tampa on June 6, 1898. Although Tampa was a major part of embarkation during the Spanish-American War, a shortage of ships hampered the transporting of the thousands of soldiers, horses, and mules headed for Santiago. Photo courtesy of the Florida State Archives
-By 1896 three hundred five voters were registered in the Lakeland district, and by 1898 the population neared eight hundred. The citrus industry got its start in the 1870;s when a grove was planted where Florida Southern College now stands. In 1888 strawberries proved to be profitable, and by 1894 Lakeland was shipping more strawberries than any other town in Florida. Phosphate, discovered in the Peace River Valley in the late 1880′s, quickly became a giant business, with as many as twenty trains a day operating in Lakeland to carry out the rock. Although the economy was temporarily slowed down in this land of pioneer farmers and cattle barons. Lakeland was forging ahead; in 1891 it became the only town in Florida other than Jacksonville and Tampa to have electric lights.
-During the Spanish-American War nine thousand troops arrived in Lakeland between May 14 and May 17, 1898. The soldiers marched south from the railroad station down the sandy road to Lake Morton, where they set up the first camp. Some of the soldiers and volunteers who trained three months was a boost for the economy, from the farmer selling meat and produce to the child selling lemonade. Another immediate effect on the new community was an infestation of flies, thousands and thousands of the brought with the horses of two companies of cavalry. Cows had to stand in the lakes up to their ears to escape the swarming red flies, and farmers distant from water covered their cows and horses with old coats to protect them. A longer-range effect of the Spanish-American war was tourism; many soldiers who had been stationed in Lakeland returned. However, 1898 was not the beginning of the tourist industry; Abraham Munn had visited as a tourist in 1877 and had become “enamored with the beauty and climatic charms of the state.”
-By the end of the century Lakeland had the appearance of a frontier town. All buildings were wooden, and sand was deep everywhere. The one block of stores, on Pine Street between Kentucky and Massachusetts, had only broad boards for sidewalks. No stores or houses were vacant, and both were in demand. An early newspaper, the Lakeland Cracker, complained of fleas and suggested that hogs not be allowed to run freely in town, but as these animals were the garbage collectors, the suggestion was not acted upon. North of the downtown was wilderness of hundreds of pine trees and a few sandy roads. In spite of the rough conditions, some leisure activities were pursued. Many of these pleasures were of a simple nature, such as gathering flowers, catching crabs, picnicking, and climbing trees. A brass band, organized near Lake Morton in March of 1898, played for President Grover Cleveland in 1894 on his way through town on a fishing trip. A great county fair was organized near Lake Morton in March of 1898. In addition to agricultural exhibits were baseball games, bicycle rides, and oratory. Lakeland had become a center of activities.
-Early Schools
-Education was considered important even by the first homesteaders in the Lakeland area. although public education was unavailable practically any place in Florida before the late 1860′s, settlers banded together to pay teachers for primitive private schools. Jesse Keen and J.W Futch built a small log school in the early 1870′s. This school was said to have “a fine ventilating system” because of the wind that whistled through cracks in the wall and through the entrance, which had no door.  Seven pupils, who sat on two cedar-log benches, were taught by Mr. Futch’s niece for a school year of three months. In 1873 another private school was opened near Crystal Lake; this tiny structure, which served the Combee family among others, closed because of inadequate facilities. Oftentimes schools in the late 1800′s had no slates, blackboards, or pencils. The teaching method emphasized repetition: drill, drill, and more drill. America’s best-selling school book was the McGuffey Reader. Rote and routine and rigid discipline were the three R’s of the nineteenth-century education.
-The Academy
-Lakeland’s first public school was built in 1884-85 at the intersection of Tennessee Avenue and Lime Street. The corner, where the GTE building now stands, was then a beautiful piece of woodland that served as an excellent playground. The Academy, named after Plato’s school of philosophy near Athens, was a three hundred dollar shanty serving forty students. The structure also served as a church and a town hall; it was at The Academy that the townspeople of Lakeland voted to incorporate. This crude frame structure with its octagonal bell tower started with one room in which all grade levels were taught, but by 1897 almost two hundred school children attended.
-                On October 4, 1897, the Lakeland Academy burned down.  A description of the disaster appeared in the Bartow Courier-Informant on October 6,1897:
-       Monday morning about 4 o’clock the Lakeland High School building was burned, with all of its contents. It is supposed to have been set by tramps, as a number of them had been driven out of the building on Sunday afternoon, and as it rained during the night it is but natural to suppose that these fellows went back into the building and when they left the next morning carelessly left a lighted match or a fire where it ignited and started the conflagration. The building and contents were insure for $800, an amount large enough to cover the value of the desks and books perhaps. School was stopped for one day only, the new Bryant building opposite Forbes drug store having been rented, where school opened Tuesday morning.
-After the fire a temporary school was constructed on the same site. Each year additional classrooms were added, making it a long structure. At one time it was whitewashed. This facility served as Lakeland’s school until 1902, when the new brick school was built near Lake Wire.
-Lakeland High School
-As Lakeland’s first public school would have started as an elementary school, it is difficult to determine when courses at the secondary level were introduced. Summerlin Institute, now Bartow High School, is called the first high school in Polk County. Since it opened as a public school in 1888, Lakeland’s opening had to have been later. In his History of Polk County M.F. Hetherington states that there were ten graduates of Lakeland High School in 1897. As high school at that time consisted of a four-year program, secondary courses would have been offered in 1893, but it is likely that they were offered earlier than that.
-The following resolution appears in the Polk County School Board Minutes of September 2, 1901:
-The following was read and adopted:
-Whereas, the Summerlin Institute, the  Lake-land and Fort Meade schools were declared by a former Board as the high schools in the county, and Whereas it is affirmed in the course of study adopted by the county that the Summerlin Inst. alone is the high school,
-Resolved, that this Board reaffirms the action of said former Board and declares that the three schools above named are the high schools of the county and as such, entitled to the same consideration.
-This board reaffirmed what a previous board had done, but the previous board neglected to record its ruling. Sixty-four schools operated in Polk County in 1887, and all transactions were recorded in longhand. What the secretary chose to record depended upon what he deemed important at the time. For instance, on Janurary 4, 1898, this was the important issue of the day:
-          Whereas, It has come to the knowledge of this Board that dancing has been permitted in some school houses in this county; and Whereas we believe it improper to use School houses for such purposes, Therefore, be it resolved by the Board of Public Instruction of Polk County . . . That this board condemns in the strongest terms the use of any school house for dancing . . .
-Although the year of Lakeland High School’s inception was not specifically recorded, Summerlin Institute, Fort Mead High School, and the Lakeland Academy are grouped together in the June 1, 1889, minutes.  Best evidence therefore indicates that there should be a grand two-hundred-year birthday party for Lakeland High School in the year 2089, and a one-hundred-year celebration for the Harrison School of the Performing Arts at the same time.
-One  Noteworthy Student
-Park Trammel, born in 1876, became one of Florida’s most distinguished citizens. He became mayor of Lakeland in 1899, representative to the legislature in 1902, state senator in 1905, state attorney general in 1909, and governor of Florida in 1913. He was elected in 1916 to the United States Senate, where he had a distinguished career until his death in 1936.
-Park’s father, John Trammell, was Lakeland’s first mayor. Park attended the Lakeland public schools and went to Tennessee to study law. When he returned to Lakeland to practice law, he had only ten dollars in his pocket. He was elected mayor of Lakeland when he was just twenty-three years old. He also bought the local newspaper the Lake Region Sun, in partnership with a friend. He was the first governor to hail from Polk County; during his administration the first real start toward a state system of paved highways was made by the creation of the State Road Department. He was the first United States senator from Polk County, and when he died after having served twenty years in the Senate, flags flew at half staff in both Tallahassee and Washington. An editorial appearing in the Ledger on May 10, 1936, said, “He was honest — this is the highest praise.”  Lakeland’s first public library was named the Park Trammel Library, and today the street just south of Lakeland Regional Medical Center bears his name.