Langston Junior-Senior High School celebrated its 16th school reunion at The Hotel Hot Springs & Spa Tuesday through Saturday, highlighted by a reunion picnic on Friday at Hot Springs High School, where former students and alumni gathered for fellowship.
Memories of football games, cheerleading squads, teachers and Langston Bulldogs pride filled the room.
The first Langston school reunion was held in 1980.
Dorothy Bennett, with the class of 1958, traveled to Hot Springs from San Diego, last week to attend.
Bennett attended Langston for 11 years before leaving during her senior year and relocating to Tracy, Calif., where she graduated.
"I'm still a Bulldog at heart," Bennett said, adding she remembers that everyone at the school knew each other because the classes were so small.
"I enjoyed the football games, basketball games, the sports. I also enjoyed certain teachers -- the math teacher, Mrs. Henderson, and the science teacher, Lewis Brown. He was a very special person in my life because he influenced me to become a teacher," she said.
Bennett was an elementary teacher until her retirement.
Leon Massey graduated from Langston in 1960 and said his fondest memory of the school was the teachers.
"I think the compassion that the teachers had for the students was perhaps one of the legacies of the school," he said. "They wanted us to do the very best that we could do."
Massey played football for Langston and said the Bulldogs were an all-state team during his senior year.
Still living in Hot Springs, Massey retired a little over a year ago as executive director of a local community services office.
A 1962 Langston graduate, Tiny Ford has fond memories of her schoolteachers and said she credits her years at Langston for making her into the woman she is today.
"We loved our teachers. Now, we talk about the education that we received there and things that they instilled in us, to do the best you can no matter what," Ford said.
"Our principal said that: 'If you're going to be a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper you can be.'
"We were segregated at that time, but our teachers did a very good job, an excellent job, in preparing us for the world," she said.
"I wanted my children to see the base of what we were exposed to. Those were the times. I think they did a real good job and we've passed that on to our children. All of my kids have degrees."
Ford said one of her sons is an attorney and she has children who have become teachers.
"Education is very important. And I always tell my children that I wanted them to be productive members of society, and I'm alive to see that today; that's what they are, and that's all from my base. I feel that they will in turn give that to their children as well," she added.
"I really credit my base. You have to credit your base, your home, your foundation, your church -- I've been in church all my life, and I love the Lord. He just allowed me to live and see the fruits of the seed that he planted for us as a family and this community. We're forever Bulldogs."
Local on 07/16/2017