Lee-Davis High School in Hanover celebrates 50 years

Melissa Lett will graduate in June from Lee-Davis High School -- 50 years after her grandfather, Gayle Apperson, earned his diploma from the school.

This year, Lee-Davis and Patrick Henry high schools in Hanover County are turning 50, and both have activities planned to mark the occasion, starting with Lee-Davis tomorrow.

Lee-Davis opened to students in the spring of 1959, and Patrick Henry opened later that fall, so Principal Jeffrey Crook said his school will be celebrating during the upcoming school year.

Apperson said he remembers those first days at Lee-Davis, when students from what are now Battlefield Park and Washington-Henry elementary schools merged into the high school.

"There was a lot of excitement in the air," Apperson recalled about the first day at the new school. He said there were 73 seniors in that first graduating class, and because the county was so much smaller back then, "we all knew each other before the school was put together."

He described the teachers as caring and happy, and his peers as extended family members.

The school opened with four buildings. There was no cafeteria, but Class of 1959 alumna Caroline Beasley remembers how students could buy ice cream and milk at the end of one of the buildings.

She echoed Apperson's thoughts on how students from two schools merged together. "It went very well," she said, adding that the school's first graduation ceremony took place on a grassy common area in front of the library.

Brenda Fearnow, another 1959 graduate, said Lee-Davis was one of the name suggestions provided by students at Washington Henry. The school is named for Confederates Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.

"I remember sitting in Washington Henry and going through all these names," she said. "We were trying to be really creative."

During Lee-Davis' homecoming game last fall, Fearnow said, members of the Class of 1959 were recognized as special guests.

"They made us feel like we were really somebody," she said of the school's students and staff. "I have been so proud of what I've seen this year at Lee-Davis."

Apperson is among a group of alumni who've been helping the school get ready for Saturday. Being back inside Lee-Davis has given him a chance to see the differences between the school he used to know and the one that exists today.

The biggest difference, of course, is its size. Lee-Davis has more than 1,600 students this year, compared with about a quarter of that in 1959.

In 1959, many students stayed together from first grade through graduation.

There weren't so many students "that you couldn't remember who they were," Apperson said. "Today you might know a few people in your homeroom" who started school at the same time.

Lett -- the current Lee-Davis student -- will graduate at Virginia Commonwealth University's Stuart C. Siegel Center -- not at school, as her grandfather did.

"It's come a long way," Lett said about Lee-Davis.

Contact Holly Prestidge at (804) 649-6945 or .