Hempfield alums recall high school memories as renovation looms

Hempfield Area High School holds a special place in the life of Mick and Sue Condi.

The New Stanton couple, both 75, were homeroom classmates for three years before they graduated in 1965.

After a life together that started in a small second-floor classroom, they returned to school Saturday morning to take one last look at the building that will undergo significant changes with a major renovation that officials expect to begin this fall.

“The school was so much bigger back then,” Mick Condi said. “Our homeroom was a broom closet above the main entrance. We had 18 kids in there. The only reason I came back is to see that closet space.”

About 200 alumni and former staffers returned Saturday for the final tours that have been conducted this spring and summer ahead of the anticipated $130 million renovation of the high school building. It first opened in 1957.

Officials said contract bids for the project are expected to be opened by the school board on July 31 with construction slated to start in late summer.

School administrators have been preparing for the project for more than a year.

Ninth graders will be moved this fall to Harold Middle School during the three-year construction while those who attended the middle school there will be assigned to two other district facilities.

“What I enjoy most is that they are living their memories, that this was their homeroom, this was where they had the dance,” Hempfield Superintendent Tammy Wolicki said.

George Moreman, 85, was a member of the first graduating class at the newly built high school many years ago. He came to see how the school had changed and relive memories of his time in an automotive repair shop class.

“We started it up in school,” Moreman said of an old vehicle he and his classmates stripped down and later rebuilt. “There was no exhaust (fan) in the school back then, and it was all smoke,” Moreman said. “I want to see if the auto mechanical shop is still up there.”

While the auto shop has been gone for years, other rooms remained as Moreman remembered from his school years.

Moreman’s daughter, Kelly, 53, graduated from Hempfield in 1987.

“I wanted to see what has changed,” she said. “I go back to when it was hot and there was no air conditioning. It’s sad that some of the rooms are going away.”

Angelia Tiberio, a Hempfield Class of 1996 graduate, and her mother, Marlene, who graduated from the school 29 years earlier, came Saturday to take one last look before the three-year construction project transforms the old building.

“I remember a lot of this. There’s a lot here that’s the same from when I was here,” Angelia Tiberio said.

Her mother disagreed: “It’s very different from the way I remembered it.”

Yvonne Mahl 29, and her twin sister, Danielle, returned to tour the school they graduated from in 2012.

“We came back because we never had a 10-year reunion,” Mahl said. “This renovation is good for the new kids and makes me excited if my kids go here.”

Hempfield teacher and English department chairman James Steeley is no stranger to exploring the history of Hempfield Area High School.

Through his annual “Hempfield Project” course, he leads students to develop archival research skills and organize a collection of upwards of 2,000 objects from the high school’s long history. The students have contacted former prom queens, researched past alumni and reached out to Spartans past to gather oral histories for the archive.

But in Steeley’s own life, the high school has always held significance. His mother was part of the second graduating class, and his father worked there for much of his career. Steeley’s own first appearance in the yearbook was in 1973, in an anecdote in which he “kept pointing to Santa Claus and saying, ‘That’s my dad.’ ”

“I grew up in the building,” he said. “It’s an important place to me.”

Steeley has been one of the teachers giving tours of the high school before renovations begin since last year, when the school started giving private tours for small groups celebrating their class reunions.

The tour program expanded this summer to allow more alumni to check out the high school before the inside is reimagined.

“You’d hear alumni say, ‘I wish I could take another walk through one more time,’ ” he said. “What’s really cool about these things is there are people who have not been back into this building since they graduated, and some of them haven’t been back for 65 years. This is very important to some people. It was part of their life, and some of them don’t live in the area anymore.”

During the past tour dates earlier in the spring and summer, Steeley says the atmosphere has been cheerful, even a bit sentimental.

“They love the interaction, and being able to talk about memories that they have,” he said. “There’s a lot of laughing. I’ve seen some people tear up a little bit, too.”

For the Condis, they found their old homeroom, which over the years was enlarged and modernized.

“I am disappointed it’s not the same, but we had good memories and I remember our homeroom teacher. She was the hottest number in the school,” Condi said.