Remembering H. Fletcher Brown Vocational High School

Don Ridgeway was finally coming home to Wilmington after five years of roving the country as a music producer.

It was 1972, and on the 31-year-old’s mind was walking the halls of his high school to reminisce and reconnect with the teachers who had shaped his education and character as a young man.

When he arrived at the corner of 14th and Market streets in Wilmington, Ridgeway was stunned to find that the school building was gone, said the 1960 H. Fletcher Brown Vocational High School graduate.

“All I found was an empty lot,” Ridgeway said.

Today, a park with a statue, pagoda and memorial plaque commemorating the school and its benefactor is the sole reminder of a place that meant so much to its graduates.

Brown Vocational served greater Wilmington for 31 years, producing a generation of craftsmen, artisans and beauticians that helped make New Castle County what it is today. Once one of Wilmington’s “Big Five” sports schools (that included Howard, P.S. duPont, Wilmington and Salesianum), Brown Vocational closed in 1969 to make way for the larger, technologically up-to-date suburban Delcastle Technical High School, which opened in the fall of 1970.

Ridgeway learned that a few of his former teachers had transferred to Delcastle, and he took a bus out to Newport Road to see them. But it just wasn’t the same, he said. Without a place to return, the rich school history he longed to connect with had evaporated.

The building itself, once situated on the banks of the Brandywine River within walking distance of affluent neighborhoods and working class neighborhoods, was built thanks to a $600,000 gift from philanthropist H. Fletcher Brown, and students felt privileged to call it theirs.

“It was a wonderful, wonderful building with the finest equipment for its day, built with vision for location and beauty,” said Frank Pantano, a 1953 graduate, who lives in Greenville. “I remember just loving walking to school.”

More than the building, however, Brown Vocational was the attitude of the committed teachers and students, alumni said.

Above the ornate doorway and wide staircases leading to the 14th Street entrance, was a plaque that read, “A person who works with his hands is a laborer. A person who works with his hands and mind is a craftsman. And a person who works with their hands, mind and heart is an artisan and a Brown Vocational graduate.”

That attitude was ingrained in every aspect of Brown Vocational, said Clarence Woodlyn, who lives in Brandywine Hundred.

“It was instilled into your head that when you walked out of this facility you’re capable of getting a good job, making a good living, being above the average living style at that time,” Woodlyn said. “You would be able to afford a home. You’d be able to afford a family. You could go as far as you wanted to if you put yourself to it. That’s what you got at Brown.”

Because Brown was a vocational rather than neighborhood school, it drew students from all over the area. Elsmere resident John DalGesso, class of 1953, grew up in Little Italy. He would walk to school with his buddies from the Lincoln Street area. Others came from a distance, like Joe Stevens, class of 1952, who rode a commercial bus to the school with his brother from their home near the old Brandywine Race Track, or walked if they didn’t have money.

“You seemed to know every guy in the city,” said West Chester, Pa. resident Ken Hamilton, class of 1950, who played football for Brown with Stevens.

As the editor of the school newspaper for two years, Pantano always had “an ear to the ground” and saw everything. What he remembers well are teachers still worthy of tribute more than 50 years later.

“These teachers were dedicated,” Pantano said. “I mean, they were right in your foxhole all day. They wanted you to take off like a rocket. They were regular guys, trades people who decided to take on education, who could convey what the real world was all about.”

Woodlyn agreed.

“Some of the toughest teachers I ever met were at Brown,” he said. “They were hard. You didn’t see many smiles on their faces. And what they taught you stuck because you didn’t want to have to rehash that problem.”

Hamilton said one teacher’s tough but true words steered his life course.

“I thought I wanted to be a carpenter. But my shop teacher said, ‘Son, you’ll never make a carpenter.’ That’s what he said. But he saw I could draw.” The following year, under that teacher’s advice, Hamilton went into commercial art and had the opportunity to hone his skills under a man who had worked with the likes of Walt Disney.

So great was the student body’s admiration for their school’s leadership, they changed the school colors from blue and red to brown and white in 1951 in honor of Brown, and the longtime principal, William E. White.

Many said the education at Brown Vocational set it apart from the vocational education that came before it. It was progressive, hands-on and innovative.

“Many a day, instead of classroom work, we would go outside, especially the commercial art people, and our job was to visualize the park,” Woodlyn said. “The idea was to take that park into your mind. Look into the future and see what it would be like 20 years from now.”

Woodlyn, a 1970 graduate, attended Brown Vocational for 10th and 11th grades, but had to go to elsewhere for his senior year, because Brown closed. There was no other vocational school, since Delcastle would not open for another year, so he went to Howard, the area’s black high school.

The vocational teaching at the traditional school just wasn’t the same, Woodlyn said, and his commercial art education suffered.

It “felt like a lame duck” year, he said.

DalGesso said that feeling of being cut off is even shared by others who did graduate from Brown. He summed it up this way, “A place like Salesianum can have a class of 1995 reunion but Brown Vocational can’t. Our high school life stopped at a certain point and we have no history after that.”

What continues to bother alumni as much as the loss, is what they see as a general disregard by the rest of the community for what they lost.

When the school was slated for destruction, no one even bothered to take the quarter-million dollar mural by renown artist Frank Schoonover off the wall, Hamilton said. Nor was there any effort made to save, archive or display any Brown memorabilia at Delcastle. Alumni are still trying to get space to display the football programs, banners, school letters and other memorabilia from their private collections.

“They had a wrecking ball ready to take the thing down. They just wanted to wash it off the books,” Hamilton said.

Pantano agreed.

“I know the school was no longer workable. It was outdated. It couldn’t accommodate the number of students that wanted to get into the trades. But I have a great sadness, that the name and example of H. Fletcher Brown was not carried on.”

When Ridgeway contemplates what he and his classmates lost, it boggles his mind.

“You have ownership and pride in a school. But there is nothing left. It’s a big void,” he said.

Woodlyn agreed.

“You’ve got to remember that back then the schools were not only a part of the neighborhood. They were the neighborhood,” he said.

However, many alumni also say they carry the Brown spirit within them.

“Brown Vocational is still very much alive, more vibrant than other existing schools in this area,” Pantano said. The continuing camaraderie is evident in the perennial alumni dances, dinners, lunches and reunions that have drawn as many as 240 on special occasions, such as a recent 50 year reunion. “It goes back to being proud and accomplished working with your hands.”

As the opening pages of a class of 1953 reunion commemorative book states: “the spirit remains strong among the alumni. It was a special school where boys and girls from throughout the county came together and formed a bond.”