From Delaware City High to Gunning Bedford, Jr. Senior High to a middle school

People easily recognize the growth Delaware has seen through the years, but less apparent has been its school consolidation as districts have combined for efficiency, particularly in more rural parts of the state.

Salient is the example of Delaware City’s students, who were rolled into Gunning Bedford, Jr. Senior High in 1960, then collapsed into William Penn High School about a decade after that.

Mary Louise Deakyne was in the last graduating class of Delaware City High School, 1960. The underclassmen she knew were all moved to the new Gunning Bedford High on Middle Cox Neck Road, just outside the city, where they would graduate.

Gunning Bedford was built in farmland and named after one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a man who helped write the U.S. Constitution.

But the 1970-71 school year would be its last year as a high school, said Bruce Haase, Delaware Public Archives manager of public services. For the 1971-72 school year, Gunning Bedford was listed as a middle school in the state Education Personnel Directory, he said. That year, students formerly assigned to Gunning Bedford High were moved to William Penn High School.

The transformation came three years the Delaware General Assembly passed the Educational Advancement Act of 1968 that consolidated the state’s 49 school districts into 26. The move was intended, in part, to create districts with populations large enough to support a high school.

It was not the first time Gunning Bedford faced consolidation, said 1969 graduate Dorothy (Bendler) Gibala, who lives in Detroit. There had also been a movement to consolidate with Middletown sometime before that, she said.

“The students and school district fought that one, and it did not happen,” she said. “I am sure there were other reasons, but at least we did not get connected with one of the big rival schools at that time.”

However, the later Gunning Bedford merger still meant consolidation with a rival.

That didn’t bother Walt “Sonny” Wisowaty, a 1963 graduate who was born and raised in Delaware City and “will probably die here too.” When it comes to high school, Wisowaty, who played football and baseball, said he feels no particular sense of loss. “(It was) just a plain ol’ school for me. Could not care less!”

However, it still disappoints Bill “Reiny” Reinhart.

“Now (Gunning Bedford) students go to William Penn. That was our enemy,” said Reinhart, a 1963 graduate who spent one quarter of ninth grade at Delaware City before being moved over to the new school.

“It just makes you feel like there is a missing part of your life when they take your high school,” said Reinhart, who lives in Tennessee with his wife and family. “It’s the same thing that happened with the Navy boot camp I went to in San Diego. It no longer exists.”

Reinhart remembers playing drums in the band and participating in Spring concerts. That experience would help him when he played drums in the Navy, with whom he served a tour of duty in Vietnam.

Other experiences remain vivid memories as well, from a crush on the home economics teacher, Mrs. Ryan (“the older she got the better looking she got”), to the ex-Marine principal Mr. Sterling Brinkman (for whom being disciplined “was like being brought before Hades.”)

Looking back, Reinhart says high school was the best time of his life.

“We had good teachers. In those days, we paid attention. I remembered that in science class, two girls were sitting in the back talking and Mr. (David) Snow threw an eraser and got both of them. That was allowed back then. You had the usual fistfights between students, but most kids were good.”

Like other high schools, Gunning Bedford sent athletes and other students to the annual Delaware Foundation for Retarded Children’s Blue-Gold All-Star Football Game from 1963 to 1971, with the exception of a few years. They were Charles Armstrong and Norman Neal in 1963, Geraldine Cross in 1965, Sara Sartin and Paul Spitzer in 1966, Pamela Bendler-Gray and David Nichols in 1968, Jo-Anne Miller and Harry Portlock in 1969 and Debbie Hudson in 1971.

John Lewis (class of 1969) said his son went to the current Gunning Bedford Middle School.

“It was nice being back at the school for open house and running into a couple of former classmates who had become teachers at Gunning Bedford,” he said. “I think Colonial School District will one day need another high school and it would be nice to see Gunning Bedford reopened as a senior high school. … Go Panthers!”