Quick Post

Just ran into a webpage for the Loudoun County High School Class of 1963. Along with reunions, they have lots of pictures from the time when they went to LCHS and a really cool video tour of the school from 2003, before LCHS's big makeover renovation in 2005/2006. They also have a link on their homepage, I found, to this blog's post on LCHS's Flag Controversy!

So, thank you for the shout-out, and congratulations on your just-passed 50th anniversary!

Fun Little Project: Update

Loudoun County High School, from Lord Loudoun 1955

Well, it's been a while. A summer passed, and I was barely in Loudoun. It's sad to say it but I've moved on from LCPS history. Nearly a year has gone past when I announced I had a fun secret project. It was supposed to be my major finale... and still will be, mind you. I finished it a long time ago, but it was never published anywhere. I've held off on posting anything, in case the powers-that-be have plans they have not shared with me, but I thought I would at least share what the project is.

Can you keep a secret, Internet? I wrote... a history of Loudoun County High School. I thought it would be terrifying. And it was. An almost 60 year old building? Lots to cover. Not to mention it's my alma mater, so I can't just write completely terribly.

So where is it? It's been given to the school. The 60th is coming up soon (2014!), so it could be they are waiting for that. If the 60th passes and it doesn't appear, I will post it here.

Loudoun County High School is one of the schools that really deserves a history written on it, yet none exists. I hope I did it justice.

News on the Sterling Annex Building

Sterling Annex Building, picture from 2011

[Update August 2023: This school has now been demolished. Check out Sterling Annex DEMO DAY 1]

Former Sterling Annex Property Sold To Belfort*

This news came out in April of this year. This probably spells doom for the former school building / community center.



[* As happened from my first post, the online trail of information for this property keeps disappearing. The Leesburg Today newspaper was bought by the Loudoun Times Mirror. Their online archive of articles has been deleted.]


Read all Sterling Annex Posts:
Sterling Community Center Annex (2012)
Sterling Community Center Annex - 2016 Update
Sterling Community Center Annex - 2017 Update
Sterling Community Center Annex - 2018 Update
Sterling Community Center Annex - 2019 Update

Sterling Community Center Annex - 2020 Update

Sterling Community Center Annex - 2021 Update

Sterling Community Center Annex - 2022 Update

Sterling Community Center Annex - 2023 Update

Sterling Annex DEMO DAY 1

Sterling Annex DEMO DAY 2

Sterling Annex DEMO DAY 3

After Sterling Annex - 2024

Fun New Project

Happy Winter Break! Glad the Mayan Apocalypse didn't occur.

Anyway, over my winter break, I'm keeping busy. I got a cool new writing project I'm working on. It's something I should have done years ago. I'll keep you in the loop.

In other news, life is good, got good grades this semester. I have a history research project at school going on right now for my brotherhood (Alpha Psi Omega, the national theatre honors fraternity). I've visited the new Frederick Douglass ES, I might do a post on what I saw. Also bought Loudoun Valley's 50th anniversary publication, I do need to write about that. I haven't heard anything about the documentary. I'm sure when it's finally done, someone will tell me.

Well, that's all for now!

Loudoun County High School: Decorative Wooden Urns

Loudoun County High School, December 2009
(They were replacing the gutters and molding in the picture)

I'm not one of those people who likes to brag, but this is a nice story and I feel like it could eventually be forgotten, like the urns in this story.

This story is about Loudoun County HS's cupola. The cupola on County is the tower structure on the roof. Now cupolas can have an ornamental role, but their main function is a natural air conditioner (LCHS didn't have an a/c machine until the 1990's). Hot air rises, and a cupola is the highest point, so all the hot air leaves through the slits on the sides. County's cupola is not a bell tower or a clock tower. The cupola itself is a pretty tall structure. It actually makes County the tallest school in the county (The Administration Building in Ashburn is the tallest building used by LCPS)

My senior year, I was co-president of County's drama department. I had this crazy idea to go through ALL the old yearbooks, take a picture of each individual year's drama page, and then post them all on the drama department's Facebook page. It was crazy and daunting (but I did it!), and I learned a lot about the school in the process.

It was pretty early on when I made my first big discovery. In Lord Loudoun 1959, they had many glamour shots of the front of the school. The yearbook was celebrating the school's 5th year of operation.

LCHS Front Lawn. No trees! LL 1959

LCHS Front Lawn from the road.
I would love to be able to take pictures like this. LL 1959

LCHS Cupola, LL 1959

What I noticed was there were these corner decorations (their official name from the blueprints are "Decorative Wooden Urns") that the school no longer had. (It should be noted these urns were only used for decoration, so to my knowledge they were solid and there was no way to open them nor any remains contained within them.)

My mission changed from a casual look-through to a full-blown mystery. Long story short, I random jumped a bit, and I found they disappeared between LL 1976 and LL 1977.

LCHS with urns, LL 1976

Urn-less LCHS, LL 1977

According to LL 1977, there was a renovation/addition during the summer of 1976. A whole new wing of the school was added, an auxiliary gym (now the wrestling room and various locker rooms). There was also work done all over the school. Most, if not all, of the windows were replaced. The few faculty that is still around from that time did not remember the urns when I asked them about it.
So, whatever happened, all that was left of the wooden urns were four stumps. Once I saw them, it was all I could see.

My next bet was to continue asking faculty members, which included trying to get ahold of the principal from back then.

"Alumnus Returns to L.C.H.S. as Principal"
Dr. Edgar B, Hatrick, LL 1976

Dr. Hatrick, a LCHS graduate, was principal of LCHS during both of those years and now happens to be Superintendent of LCPS. I emailed him about the cupola and the decorative wooden urns, and I asked if he knew what happened to them. I also sent him these two pictures:

LCHS Cupola, Lord Loudoun 1959

LCHS Cupola, Fall 2009

  

I shortly got an email response, saying he didn't remember the urns, but there was a massive repainting/repairing on the cupola around that time. He then went on to tell me he asked Mr. Oblas to check the attic to see if they were there. They were not, so he was going to have new urns (fiberglass ones) constructed to go up on the cupola.

That was more than I could dream of for a first reply. I didn't ask for replicas, but I probably would have eventually asked or done something about it.

Time passed. Thanksgiving, Winter Break, and Spring Break passed by.

April 26, 2010 they started putting up scaffolding around the cupola. Not only was the cupola getting urns, it was getting a paint job and its copper top cleaned up.

Scaffolding going up!

Fully tarped, the paint has been stripped off

"Caution, Lead Hazard, Keep Out"

Fun Fact: the weather vane's rod is six feet tall.

Repainting

Soon, the whole thing was finished and the scaffolding came down. The copper looked like melted chocolate. The cupola remained in this way for a couple of days to a week.

Then, one morning, they arrived.

DECORATIVE FIBERGLASS URNS!!

Installation took two days. The first day, they tested them out.

Each urn is four feet tall!

On the second day, they were installed.

Everything was finished right before my graduation. It was a dream come true.

Furthering the dream at graduation, Dr. Hatrick had a speech, and a large part of it was about the urns and I. That was a big honor for me. Later, I got name-dropped by the guest speaker, Dr. Vinton Cerf. He co-designed the Internet. His speech was titled "The Power of Discontent," about how discontent is a force that creates ideas for change to improve the future. I think I have taken that message to heart.

Mr. Internet (June 2010)

I don't know whatever happened to the original wooden urns. The main theory is they started rotting, but who knows, maybe someone is using them as the tops of bed posts right now.


Two things that are interesting:

In the 2005 renovation plans for LCHS, whenever they showed the cupola, the urns also appeared. Were they supposed to be added on? It could be they just lifted it from the original blueprints

The other interesting thing is the school crest.

LCHS School Crest

The crest doesn't depict the urns. That's another reason they could be easily forgotten if nothing had an image of them. From an artistic standpoint, it would be a lot of detail to include the urns, they'd just look like black blobs and mess up the lines. The cupola doesn't look like it's missing them if they aren't put in. (This is all just theory. I'm not sure.)

So that's the story! That is why you will hardly see me posting pictures of Loudoun County HS pre-urns. I don't want Google Image Search full of outdated pictures, and I don't want people to forget them again.

Hey County. Haven't seen you look so good since 1976.

This is my last day of work, but not the finale of the blog. Still got a few more posts to work on. It's been a great two years. I've learned a lot, I've had lots of fun. I'm going to miss working here.

Sources:

LCHS Graduation 2010

Loudoun Times Mirror LCHS Graduation 2010 Article

Interesting Odds and Ends

"Horace Mann" greets me every morning to work!

 
 Over the past two summers, I've managed to find a lot of notable gems throughout old files, boxes, and right in front of me. Here are some of my favorites:

• "Horace Mann," painted by Elaine Nunnally in 2005 for the Horsing Around Loudoun public art project, is probably the most public of the odds-and-ends here. It featured all the schools in the county at the time (68 schools in 2005. Seven years later, there are now 82!). Schools were grouped by their 2005 school clusters. There's a couple of dirt patches on the top saying "Under Construction." I believe the space is only an allusion to the fact of LCPS's continuing fast growth, not a space to update the horse in the future. Horsing Around Loudoun was a similar project to the Cow Parade.

• The Office of Support Services gets copies of facility use forms for their files. It was quite exciting to see the "Obama for America" LCHS rally one.

• In construction files, there were some blueprints for an Islamic Saudi Academy campus. It was dated late 90's. This was not being planned by LCPS but a group that had two campuses in Fairfax County. A quick google search led me to this article from 2004. Apparently, the Academy decided not to use the land, and it was sold to the county with schools in mind. According to this Washington Post article preview, the site would have been in Ashburn on Farmwell Road. Currently, there are only warehouses near/on the property. Broad Run HS is unrelatedly close by the site.

• I've collected many hats working here:
  
  
  

  
  

     The hat on the left is a regular hat. The hat on the right is almost a regular hat, except it also has a built-in flashlight under the bill of the hat! The center hat is a marching band hat from Park View HS. They recently got new uniforms, so the old ones were auctioned away. I was the only person there who knew what the different uniform pieces were (I have four years of high school marching band under my belt), so I really helped them out. We found 119 hats and plumes the first time, but after the auction, they found an extra hat, and you can't really sell one hat by itself, so it was given to me.

• While going through possible auction items, a CD Player had a CD in it. Testing the CD Player out with it, I realized this CD had all the songs that were played during my Elementary School P.E. class. What a blast to the past!

• This mug:
  

• There was a report on Round Hill Elementary School (Now the Round Hill Center/Support Facility) and the reasons why they decided to get tear down the original 1911 wing of the building. I don't remember exactly what it said, but it made sense and I appreciated the justification.

• High School Prototype Poster:
  

  

  In my cubicle from last year

  
  This was hanging in the old Douglass Support Facility. Between when the Fire and Rescue Squad practiced on the building (breaking holes through walls and ceilings) and the start of demolition, I saved this. Good thing too, because the next day it rained. The paper was very frail, so I had it laminated. It has proudly hung in my cubicle for two summers now. As you can see, it's a very wide poster. It doesn't match any school in particular, but I've been told it was printed before Stone Bridge HS.

• And, probably my favorite find, Stage Curtain Samples for the 1939 Arcola School.
  
  

  

  Regrettably the only picture I have is of the folder it was in.
  I was too in awe to remember to take any pictures of the samples.

   These were small curtain sample squares sent to Superintendent O.L. Emerick to pick out the curtain color. Now that duty would fall to the construction department; it just shows you how small the school system was. There were many different colors to choose from and at least three companies sent samples. I don't know which curtain sample was chosen. I didn't find this in any other school file, so for it to last as long as it had was quite impressive.

   As a final of final favorites, I have been lucky to have the opportunity to work with many wonderful gems of coworkers these last two years. They all work hard and do their jobs pretty well (as far as I know). But it wasn't all stiff and serious, I have many fine memories of small pranks and jokes. As much as some of them might not believe it, I enjoy all the unique personalities and will miss them.

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   This is my last week on the job. I do have a couple more posts I will be working on, so they will come out for the next few weeks (hopefully). This week will be more me-personal history stuff.