Knoch High’s first graduating class will celebrate its 65th reunion
In the 1957-58 school year, juniors at high schools in Penn, Winfield and Clinton townships along with Saxonburg borough greatly anticipated the completion of a large construction project in Jefferson Township at the intersection of Dinnerbell and Knoch roads, as it would make them the first graduating class from the new Knoch High School.
Sure enough, the school was finished in time for the 105 students to attend in the 1958-59 school year.
Those students will proudly attend their 65th class reunion Aug. 31 at the former Winfield Township Fire Hall.
Reunion committee members, who danced to songs like “Mack the Knife,” “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” “Stagger Lee” and “16 Candles” during their senior year, recalled attending classes at the new Knoch High School, which is now undergoing a major addition and renovation project.
“We were a lot of different schools thrown together,” said Louise O’Brokta Allen.
She explained that students from Winfield-Clinton High School, Penn Township High School, Saxonburg High School and a group of students who lived in Jefferson Township but formerly attended Butler High School were assigned to classes at the spacious new school.
“To us, it was so large,” Allen said. “We had to go up to the second floor!”
She recalled the creation of the knight as the new South Butler County School District’s mascot, and students designing a new class ring and writing a new alma mater song.
Allen said the group has held 17 class reunions since 1959.
“We had them every five years until the 50th, then we started having them every couple years,” she said.
Jeanne (DeVando) Fox said it is unusual that students who only spent one school year together, and not 12 like typical graduates, continue to treasure one another’s friendship after 65 years.
Fox , who performed in Knoch High’s first senior play, remembers lining up at the end of the school year to practice receiving her diploma.
“I met people I didn’t know,” she said.
Fox said the fifth class reunion, which was held at the former Mineral Springs Hotel outside of Saxonburg, wasn’t the most successful of the reunions they’ve had.
“By the 10th, we got friendlier,” she said.
Allen and Fox recalled dressing up for fancy dinner dances for the first few reunions, then a classmate offered up her large, open field with a pond and pavilion. Several reunions were held there.
“We just fell in love with that,” Fox said. “Nobody was putting on airs. You could just get together and talk.”
She said most of the graduating class attended one-room schoolhouses during their elementary years, with no running water and a frosty outhouse behind the building.
“We’re probably the last generation that did,” Fox said.
Fox attended the one-room Sefton School in Cherry Valley from second through fourth grades, then the Clinton Township Elementary School was built.
“Our teacher was Joanne Harbison, and her boyfriend would come have lunch with her,” she recalled of the Sefton School. “We had long lunches, because he would play ball with the boys.”
She said other Knoch classmates attended elementary school in one-room schoolhouses in the Ivywood and Sun Mine neighborhoods, and those in other areas in southeast Butler County.
Fox said she was excited and nervous about her senior year as the summer of 1958 waned, and did find it a challenge getting around the large building at first.
“I got lost the first day, I remember,” she said. “I could not find my locker at the end of the day.”
Still, Fox wouldn’t trade her senior year for anything.
“We had good teachers, and we had a lot of fun there,” she said.
Dwight Crowe said meeting many of his classmates in 12th grade seemed to somehow draw the classmates closer to one another.
“It just seemed to make it a little easier to get along, somehow,” he said.
Crowe was captain of the inaugural Knoch Knights basketball team, which posted a season record above 500.
He said that feat was accomplished largely because players from Penn Township High School’s very successful basketball team moved to Knoch High School in 1958-59.
Crowe neglects to mention he was one of those top-notch players in the late 1950s.
He recalled a science teacher, Mr. White, who also served as the school’s first principal, and a math teacher named Mr. Herzig, who had a natural gift for conducting a nonjudgmental classroom and encouraged students to shout out the answers as he wrote problems on the blackboard.
“That was a lasting impression,” Crowe said. “He brought out the best in everybody.”
He also admitted the large, new school was a little intimidating, especially coming from the much smaller schools he had attended.
“I was from Renfrew (Elementary School), for God’s sake,” Crowe said. “It was a two-room schoolhouse. There were five kids in my class.”
Allen said 69 members of the Knoch Class of ’59 remain at age 81 or 82. About 50 people attend the reunions, including spouses.
“We’ll get close to 40% of those still living,” Allen said, showing off her Knoch High math skills.
She said planning the reunions has become simple because there have been so many, and because a seven-person committee plans it.
Allen looks forward to her 65th class reunion, which simultaneously celebrates the 65th anniversary of Knoch High School.
But mainly, Allen looks forward to hanging out with her school chums once more.
“It’s a very close group,” she said.
