Mike Moore | The Journal Gazette Gwyn Plummer places her hands Saturday on handprints she left behind when she was a middle school student at the building set to be torn down.
Mike Moore | The Journal Gazette Kimberly Harber, left, and Chris Strong look for old painted ceiling tiles painted by their classmates while visiting the New Haven Middle School on Saturday.
Mike Moore | The Journal Gazette A group of former students gather in the lunchroom at the New Haven Middle School on Saturday to share stories and reminisce before the building's scheduled demolition on Monday.
Mike Moore | The Journal Gazette Guests gather in the hallways at the New Haven Middle School on Saturday to reminisce and share stories before the building's scheduled demolition on Monday.
Mike Moore | The Journal Gazette Guests enter the New Haven Middle School on Saturday to enjoy one last look at the iconic school before the building's scheduled demolition on Monday.
Mike Moore | The Journal Gazette Guests gather in the gymnasium at the New Haven Middle School on Saturday to reminisce and take pictures before the building's scheduled demolition on Monday.
Mike Moore | The Journal Gazette Guests explore the stairwells at the New Haven Middle School on Saturday to enjoy one last look at the iconic school before the building's scheduled demolition on Monday.
Mike Moore | The Journal Gazette Guests gather outside the New Haven Middle School on Saturday to enjoy one last look at the iconic school before the building's scheduled demolition on Monday.
Although it may be just another brick in the wall, the bricks were going fast Saturday at a nostalgia fest taking place at Schnelker Park, just outside a beloved school.
For $20, residents received dinner, a beverage and a brick from the old New Haven High School, which is set for demolition to begin Monday.
“You can't stop progress,” said Claron Hanefeld, a 1960 graduate who returned to teach math at his alma mater after college. “There's just a lot of memories that you can't take away from us.”
Hanefeld came to the goodbye party, which included a final building tour, with his wife, Linda Aldrich Hanefeld, another 1960 graduate.
The Hanefelds were among hundreds who attended the Bulldog Bash, named after the school's mascot.
Graduates were still shaking their heads over what was done to the high school gym in 1977, when the school was changed from a high school to New Haven Middle School.
“They ruined the gym,” someone said. “There's nothing left of the old arena,” grumbled another, although the original design apparently gave fire marshals fits.
The gym used to be in the round and, even though it had gone through its drastic change and was nothing like the old one, graduates congregated in it Saturday as if it were yesterday.
“I don't have one memory,” said James Schmidt, a 1969 graduate, greeting fellow classmates. The high school “was such a community school. On Friday and Saturday nights, everybody came to the games.”
His graduating class of 425 students were “all really very close. It was family,” Schmidt said.
The red brick building saw thousands of New Haven High School graduates walk through its doors from 1954 to 1976, said Bob Nelson, East Allen County Schools board member and reunion facilitator. Beginning in the fall of 1976, high schoolers went to a new building across Highway 930 East.
That building, New Haven High School, is being renovated and will open in the fall for grades 7-12. New Haven Intermediate School, a 143,000-square-foot building for grades 3 to 6, is under construction next to the former high school and will open in the fall, Nelson said.
When demolition on the old high school is complete, the space will become a green area for the community to use, Nelson said.
That space will be about the size of a football field, he estimated.
Nelson, a Woodlan High School graduate, said he walked through the building with his wife, Lori Hyman Nelson, who is an alum, and “it was packed.”
“It gave me goosebumps,” he added.
But high school alums weren't the only ones attending the goodbye party.
Friends Adam Shelpman and Stacy Cook Black saw the event on Facebook and came to say goodbye. Both spent their middle school years in the building before going to high school in 2002.
“It's sad, weird,” said Black, who was hoping the building would be renovated instead.
The two friends posed for a photo in the circle, a brick opening at one of the entrances where they said friends would congregate for lunch hour. Across the driveway, there was a basketball court. They remembered some kind of nature preserve on the highway side of the school.
“It still feels like home when you drive in, no matter how long you've been gone,” Shelpman said. They both live in Fort Wayne, they added.
Money from the brick sales will go to buy a motorized American flag for the Armstrong Arena, the basketball arena at the current New Haven High School, Nelson said.
