Every time Ken Boulden steps into his red 1964 Corvair convertible, it’s a drive down memory lane.
The hotrod is the car he took to his De La Warr High School senior prom, refurbished to its original state in painstaking detail and stocked with memorabilia from the era: an original drive-in speaker from the Ellis Drive-In Theater in Wilmington, fuzzy dice, yearbook, varsity letter, and a banner from his senior class trip to the 1964 World Fair in New York City.
Boulden, of Middletown, reassembled this homage to his “real life ‘Happy Days’” era six years ago by tracking down the original parts dispersed throughout the country using the car’s serial number and the National Society of Corvair Owners Registry.
It was well worth it, he said.
“Time goes by, the years flee, but every time I drive it, it’s a way to bring back those good days,” said Boulden, a 1964 graduate who is the New Castle County Clerk of Peace.
Holding onto artifacts of the past are important for De La Warr alumni like Boulden because their high school ceased to exist in 1978, following a sweeping desegregation order that immediately closed it, two other area high schools and many other middle and elementary schools.
De La Warr High School opened in 1960, and when it did, a rivalry with William Penn High School instantly erupted, as both were in New Castle, said Bill Coleman, a 1965 De La Warr graduate.
“We were the new school competing with a longtime high school,” he said, “so it was a natural, friendly rivalry that transcended any sport.”
| The high school “on the hill” was named after Englishman Lord De La Warr, (Thomas West), who was the first governor of Virginia. According to state of Delaware history, early explorer Samuel Argall was blown off course and ended up in a bay that he named after his governor and fellow Englishman. |
De La Warr’s Lions exploded onto the sports scene that first year when its baseball team won the Blue Hen Conference championship, led by Terry Arnold, Jim Maxwell and Donald Lloyd. They continued to dominate with five straight Blue Hen baseball championships, with Coleman on four of those teams. In this era, before official state championships, the Blue Hen title was the biggest a school could win, he said.
The rivalry made for a close-knit community, but it was more than that.
“We had no busing at the time, everyone walked. That created a unique feeling because going to and from school was a social event,” said three-time class president Coleman. Walking together created character, camaraderie and an atmosphere where the upperclassmen didn’t look down on underclassmen. “It was a group of one because we were all from the same community.”
That sense of unity pervaded even across racial lines, alumni said. That is one reason why so many were outraged that a desegregation order closed the school.
The DeLaWarr School District was about 40 percent black in the 1960s, and had become about 55 percent minority when it was made party to Evans vs. Buchanan, a lawsuit that resulted in a 1978 court order mandating that Northern New Castle County schools integrate through pupil reassignment, busing and school closures.
“We all said why are they even messing with this thing? We had a greater balance than any of the other school districts,” Coleman said. “They should have never touched (De La Warr).”
Many alumni didn’t find out about De La Warr’s closing until years later.
After Linda Jean Thompson Worley graduated from De La Warr in 1965, she married a military man and moved around a lot. When she returned to Delaware to live with her parents while he served overseas in the late 1970s, she was in for a surprise. The school her daughter was assigned to, McCullough Elementary, was once De La Warr.
“I was shocked,” she said, because her alma mater was gone, and puzzled because the school, with its huge hallways and gyms, and classrooms equipped for home economics and business now house elementary children.
When Coleman found out his alma mater closed, it became his mission to find De La Warr memorabilia. Like Boulden’s classic hotrod, Coleman wanted some physical evidence of history. Finding any of it – trophies, mascots, and signage –proved to be extremely difficult.
“When the doors were closing and the school had to be emptied, everything that had the name De La Warr went into dumpsters,” said Vickie L. Jones Snyder, of New Castle, a 1968 graduate. “There was no sense of archival or historical value placed on anything. It was necessary to clear out the building, and clear it they did.”
At the time, the school consolidation policy emphasized diminishing students’ identification with their old school in service to integration into the new school they were assigned to. But far from diminishing, for some alumni, like Carolyn (Pierron) Stanley, trashing history actually increased her identification with it.
Stanley, of Middletown graduated in 1965. She, like many other graduates, didn’t learn about the closing until later, but when she did, it somehow made her feel even closer to former classmates.
For others, the loss led to longing that remains today.
“To those of us who have fond memories of school, it will always be the high school on the hill near I-95,” Anna Lewis, class of 1966, said. Even so, she often wishes she could go to just one more De La Warr Lions football game.
Some alumni said that longing has led to greater identification with and involvement in their children’s schools. (Lewis said, “Thank God it wasn’t William Penn for my son. He went to Hodgson.”) Others say nothing can replace the loss.
“I envy my friends that are William Penn graduates,” Coleman said. “They relate to the undergraduate populace that is now William Penn. They have that in common. We don’t have that.”
Susan Goldner, who was called Gladys Hamm at De La Warr high school, graduated in 1965.
“It still makes me sad when I go back for a reunion,” she said. “The building is still there and I'm not sure if that makes it worse or better.”
