Hempfield Area hopes first 49 queens will join 50th at homecoming ceremony this fall

When Renee Lytwak walked onto Hempfield Area High School’s football field in the fall of 1973, she never expected to leave it adorned with a crown and bouquet of flowers.

That day, Lytwak — then a high school senior dressed in a floor-length red gown trimmed with white lace — took home the title of the district’s first homecoming queen.

“It was a total shock,” said Lytwak, who lives in Arizona.

Her crowning moment kick-started a half-century of homecoming traditions that has grown from the simple ceremony during a football game into a weekend filled with a communitywide parade and homecoming dance, which are enjoyed by students and alumni each year.

District officials are gearing up to crown the school’s 50th homecoming queen Sept. 30 and are hopeful the first 49 queens will return to the field to participate in the moment.

“I think the spectacle of 49 homecoming queens standing on a field when you crown your 50th would be an amazing event,” said Jim Steeley, head of the high school English department and creator of the homecoming queen project.

Steeley has been working with students in his class titled The Hempfield Project to contact former homecoming queens to see whether they are able to attend.

The goal is to have all 49 queens ride on different floats for each decade in which they were crowned. They might also stand on the field when the 50th queen is announced.

“Once the idea was in my head and once the kids in class talked about it, I loved the idea more and more,” Steeley said. “I wasn’t aware of anybody who tried to do anything like this. … It’s only 50 years, so we started down the process. Class ended, but students volunteered and started putzing around with alumni directories and names and started looking people up.”

At times, students have discovered a former queen is a classmate’s mother or aunt. Others are more difficult to track down because they moved out of state.

According to AnnaMarie Pacione, a recent Hempfield graduate who took Steeley’s course last school year, the class was split into small groups and then assigned a specific queen to track down via social media or yearbooks.

“As a recent Hempfield graduate, it makes me very proud and is a full circle (moment) of total camaraderie,” Pacione said. “Hempfield and our community means so much to people at different stages of their lives.”

By mid-week, 37 queens had committed to attend the event, including Lytwak.

Steeley said they are working with the remainder of the queens to see whether they will be able to attend.

“It’s been fascinating running into people or just realizing that I have students in class whose moms were homecoming queens here or somebody whose teacher was,” Steeley said. “Those are obviously easy ones to get a hold of, but a few have gone on to other states.”

Steeley noted that for him, leading the event is personal and marks a long line of Hempfield Area alumni within his family.

Steeley’s mother was a member of the second graduating class, and his father taught at the district for 25 years. Steeley graduated from Hempfield Area in 1988 and has spent his entire teaching career in the district. His three children also graduated from the district in 2019.

“This is just another part of that, and it means a great deal to me to give back to them, to make this a reality,” Steeley said.

He noted this year’s homecoming event will be the last one in the high school as it currently sits. District officials are moving forward with a multimillion-dollar high school renovation project that will involve tearing the building down to its structural bones and rebuilding everything as new.

While Lytwak said she isn’t sure what to expect from the event, she noted she was excited to return to her former high school.

“It will be a blast from the past. … It will be fun just to be back in the old high school,” Lytwak said.