By Phil Brown, commentary
July 29, 2008 11:02 pm
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It was in the spring of 1912. Students at Enid High School were ending their first year in what was described as “the magnificent new high school building” on West Wabash, and invitations were going out for the Fourth Annual Enid High School Alumni Association banquet honoring the senior class.
For reasons known only to those who staged the banquet in 1912, the formal invitations called for the reception and banquet to be held at the high school, but news reports of the event describe it as being held in the Billings Hotel in downtown Enid.
The Billings Hotel had been built by Edmund Frantz fairly early in the city’s existence, and has sometimes been referred to as the Frantz Hotel — the place “where many went after church for Sunday dinner.” It was on the northwest corner of Broadway and Independence in downtown Enid.
H.H. Champlin’s bank also occupied the building in the days right after it was a hotel. In fact, as the story goes, in the late afternoon when the weather was mild, and the front steps of the bank would have been in the shade, Champlin would sit on the steps and greet passersby.
And according to the story, it was one of those casual contacts with an oil lease broker who happened to be passing by that got Champlin into the oil business, an area where he was phenomenally successful.
Meanwhile — rewind to 1912 — according to news accounts of the 1912 alumni dinner at the Billings Hotel, it was “one of the most delightful functions of commencement week, and was attended by 80 members of the alumni association, EHS seniors and faculty members.”
Mr. Douglas Frantz spoke about the class of 1912, and the pride of the graduates at being “the first to be graduated from the handsome new building.”
Remember this was in the days before World War I. It was before radio and TV, computers, and BlackBerries, iPhones, (few households had a regular land line telephone). Events like this were a major attraction.
Women couldn’t vote, and some universities wouldn’t admit them, but Miss Jessie Marie Worcester spoke to the graduating seniors about “Suffragettes in Business.” (A suffragette was a woman campaigning for women’s rights.) They finally got the right to vote in 1920.
Anyway, Miss Worcester said even at that time (1912) there was a great demand for educated women in every department of the business world.
E.L. Overman, of the history department at the high school, spoke in support of Oklahoma Colleges and universities. He said our institutions of higher learning provided ample educational opportunities, and it was not necessary for graduates to go back east to continue their education. (Enid’s Oklahoma Christian College, later renamed Phillips University, had been open for about five years at the time.)
I believe both of these talks would have been pertinent today.
These short talks made after the five-course dinner in the hotel’s dining room were, as the news story described, “in response to toasts.” I’m not sure exactly what that means, but the news story goes on to say “Mr. H.E. Towel, professor of manual training at the high school, was happy in his response to the toast, Hammer, Plane and Saw.” A number of impromptu toasts were then called for and Mr. Roscoe Field, Mr. Otis Hamm, Miss Irene Cullison and Miss Elvira Cook responded.
Dr. Walton H. McKenzie was president of the alumni association and welcomed the class of 1912 into the association. McKenzie was the medical doctor with a long white beard that hung to his knees. He made the race for land at the strip opening by jumping from a moving Rock Island train at the Enid townsite wearing a top hat and a long coat and carrying his doctor’s bag. He was the grandfather of the late Dr. James F. Tagge.
Mariager’s Orchestra provided the music for the alumni event.
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On August 7, 2008, at noon, the Enid High School Alumni Association will conduct a dinner in the school’s new food court to formally present the funds ($35,000) to the high school for the remodeling of the history room (Room 220) so that it will closely resemble a courtroom. The actual transfer of money took place earlier so the school could begin work on the project immediately.
The EHSAA previously has given $30,000 to EHS to finance the landscaping of the school grounds, and the association plans to redo other rooms at the high school in its effort to promote academics.
Brown is a former managing editor of the Enid Morning News.
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