“That’s where I was supposed to go and then they changed the school (boundary) lines. In my mind, I didn’t want to go to school with the greasers and hoods,” she said, the memory making her shake her head.
But her wrong-headed view got a complete 180 degree turn the first time she stepped off E. Fifth Street and through the front doors of Stivers High in the fall of 1961.
“The minute I walked through those two front doors, the place had me,” she said with a growing smile. “It was like someone reached down and put their arms around me. I knew this is where I wanted to be.
“I knew I was home.”
Judy, whose married name is now Kennard, remembers looking up the front flight of stairs and seeing the stained-glass windows at the top of the landing.
With a grin, she added quietly: “And some of the football team was standing up there, too. I still can tell you each of their names. That’s where all the cool kids stood back then.
“I just wanted to get the full teen experience and I felt it here. There’s something about this school that just grabs your heart. And I could walk out right now and find you 30 or 40 people who’d say the same thing.”
Kennard shared her Stivers story of six decades past as she sat in the Alumni Room of what’s now the highly acclaimed Stivers School for the Arts.
The president of the Stivers Alumni Association, she was at the school the other day making final preparations for the all-classes, “Saved by the Bell” reunion that will be held there Saturday from noon to 5 p.m.
It’s free and open not only to those who went to Stivers, but anyone who wants to tour one of the showpiece schools in the Miami Valley. Originally opened in 1908, Stivers is the oldest operating school in the DPS system.
The magnet school, which now focuses on visual and performing arts while also offering an extensive academic curriculum, is consistently ranked as one of America’s best high schools by the U.S. News and World Report.
The Stivers Jazz Orchestra has won national championships at the Berklee College of Music high school jazz festival three times in recent years.
And nearly a century ago, the Tigers were a basketball powerhouse, winning a state title in 1924 and three more with Bill Hosket Sr. from 1928-30. And in 1976, the girls’ track team won the state crown.
Saturday there will be food trucks out front and inside longtime Stivers teacher Mike Unger — who, with the help of seven students, authored the book “TEACH: Lessons I Learned from My Students and Colleagues” — will hold a book signing with the proceeds going to scholarships for DPS students.
Guided tours will be conducted by athletics director Randy Risner at 1 and 2:30. They will end up in the Alumni Room, which is both a museum filled with athletic trophies, photos and artifacts and an active learning area. On the day Kennard and I spoke, metal music stands and chairs used by student musicians lined one side of the room.
“At first this was hard for me to accept that it was now a school for the arts,” Kennard admitted. “I graduated from Stivers High in 1965 and that was what I knew.”
She’d been captain of the drill team, in a sorority and had made lifelong friends.
“There’s a group of girls I met here, we still go to lunch every week and we go on vacations together every year,” she said.
In the 1980s, Stivers became a middle school and then, with the students moved elsewhere, the building was extensively renovated. Out of all that change rose what’s now the celebrated magnate middle school and high school.
Stivers specializes in areas like orchestra, dance, piano, band, choir, theater, creative writing and visual arts.
“At first, I didn’t understand it, but about 10 years ago I brought my grandkids over here for a performance and I left here crying,” Kennard said.
“I was never more proud to belonging to all this.”
Bridging the gap
“Some people call this The Trophy Room, but this room is about more than athletics,” Kennard said. “We have every piece of history in the school stored over there in those file cabinets.”
Along with yearbooks and photos, you’ll find files on famous grads like Milt Caniff, the national syndicated cartoonist who penned the Steve Canyon and the Terry and the Pirates strips; animator David Tendlar of Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor fame; model Toccara Jones; CBS president Frank Stanton; basketball greats Frankie Sanders and Chuck Grigsby; and NFL cofounder Carl “Scummy” Storck, who presided as the league’s president from 1939-41 from a downtown Dayton office.
Displayed in a glass case was a signed violin made by Stivers namesake and the school’s first principal — Captain Charles B. Stivers — who soldiered throughout the Wild West, Mexico and the Civil War while making violins on the side.
On another wall was a plaque honoring U.S. Marines Lance Corporal Joe Calvin Paul, a Stivers student who was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during the Vietnam War.
With five fellow Marines wounded in a firefight with Viet Cong near Chu Lai in August of 1965, he took a forward position to draw enemy fire so the others could be rescued. He was mortally wounded. The destroyer escort USS Joe Paul was christened in his honor.
The one thing the room needs more of are displays of recent Stivers grads and their achievements.
Kennard is aware of that and said the association is trying to find ways to bridge the gap between the aging Stivers alumni and younger School for the Arts grads.
The all-classes reunion is one attempt. The Alumni Association’s Facebook page, which has 1.5 K followers, is another.
And since 1995 Kennard said the Alumni Association has been awarding scholarships to graduating seniors and Stivers dependents. To date, 266 scholarships totaling $388,000 have been given out.
‘Once a Tiger, always a Tiger’
Walking me through the school near the end of the day’s classes, Kennard proudly pointed out some of the students’ work hanging on the walls. Down one hallway, an art show was about to begin.
“The talent here is remarkable,” she said. “The Chamber Choir and Chorale just performed at Carnegie Hall and one girl was pulled out to do a solo.”
She mentioned Brandon Patrick George, the celebrated Stivers flutist who furthered his studies at Oberlin, in Paris and the Manhattan School of Music. He’s performed as a soloist in orchestras across the nation, is part of the famed Imani Woods quintet in NYC and just released an album.
On another wall was a display of some three dozen college acceptance letters — from schools like Case Western Reserve, Alabama, Kentucky, Michigan State, Ohio State, Temple, Hawaii-Pacific, Cincinnati, Dayton, Miami and Wright State — that this year’s seniors had received.
“Something like $7 million in scholarships,” she said.
Back in the old part of the school, as we went up an old stone staircase, she laughingly noted: “I cleaned these stairs many times with as toothbrush when I pledged a sorority.”
Finally, back at those front doors she first walked through 62 years ago, I thought about something she’d revealed as we’d talked.
Her first husband went to Stivers.
And her husband now, Jerry Kennard, also went here. He’d sat in front of her in third grade, they’d graduated together and he’s enshrined in the Stivers Hall of Fame.
“So the school really did grab your heart?” I said. “Even your beaus came from here.”
“Yep,” she grinned. “Once a Tiger, always a Tiger.”
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