May 17, 2024

This website for the Class was created by Charlotte Williams Sprawls and her husband Perry Sprawls and has been maintained on their webserver (sprawls.org) over the years.  Charlotte passed away on August 28th, 2023 and the maintenance  of the website will be discontinued in the near future.  It is currently being maintained by Perry who can be contacted at sprawls@emory.edu .

Those that are interested are encouraged to copy pictures from the website for their collection.

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       The pictures from the 60th reunion in 2012, made by Hillevi Ewerts Kirkland, Charlotte Williams Sprawls,  Joe and Evelyn M. Fouts, and  Howard Grossman, were the first group that was posted here. (Look at the bottom of the websute for the links to all pictures.) Next you can click below to see the pdf file of pictures of the 63rd Reunion held on March 27-28, 2015.  If you wish, these pages may be downloaded and printed in the form in which you see them, unlike past files of the 2012 reunion.  I made the font size a little bigger to be more easily read.  We were disappointed that so many out-of-town members of the class chose not to attend this reunion.

Some of us were still around in 2017 for the 65th, held on March 10-11.   The events schedule was Friday, 5:00 pm, Dinner at Harry's Downtown, Wakeman Room
                        Saturday, 11:00 am. Gathering for lunch at Palace Italian Rest.  
                        Saturday, 1:00 pm,  Visiting at Bill & Janice Mitchell's house 

As it turned out, Perry and I were not able to attend because he was being honored at Clemson University that same weekend.  And for some reason, many other class members didn't attend either, so not many pictures were made.  However, in the 4th group below you will find a few pictures sent by Sallie Dridgers and Kemp Smith.  I am still hoping that Frankie Hutchinson will be able to find and send me the pictures I am told that she made at the 2017 gathering. [She never sent those pictures!]

In the spring of 2019 Ed Wooten attempted to organize a reunion but there was almost no response.  However, Jim Heddon, a member of the 1953 class, has begun to organize multi-class  luncheons to include members of several classes meeting together at the Lone Palm Golf Club, and the date for the 2020 luncheon was set for October 29, in hopes that the coronavirus pandemic would be contained by then.  [As it turned out, that had to be cancelled because of the pandemic]

I asked the 12 class members for whom I had e-mails in 2020 that they send me as many class member names and e-mails as they had in their contact lists so that I could reconstruct my e-mail list.  Unfortunately not many responded to my request. Please, if you know of class members who have died since 2020 when this website's list was last updated, send me those names.

List of who was there for 60th Reunion in 2012

        Pictures Page 1             Pictures Page 2            Pictures Page 3

The Class of 1952 was the last class to use the "old" building on North Florida Avenue.  Therefore the building pictured here will forever be in our minds the Lakeland High School, though for 55 years now the "new" Lakeland High has been located on Hollingsworth Road.  As you can see in the picture our old Art Deco school building has been updated and renovated and is now the Lawton Chiles Academy.  In our days there from roughly 1948-1952 there were no decorative palm trees!  And the parking lot was for Vespas and other popular brands of scooters that lots of the boys rode to school.  And Miss Williams, our biology teacher, always rode her bicycle!

We are borrowing a paragraph written by Miss Hazel Haley for the new high school's web page because we think it is so appropriate for this website too.
 

       A few lines written with love to my former students--all ten million of them.   When at the precocious age of sixteen I graduated from Lakeland High School--that splendid yellow-brick memorial to greatness on North Florida Avenue--little did I dream that a short sixty years later, I would have become the Ultimate School Matriarch, presumed to be the living annals of everything that has happened to every graduate over the past half century.

        If you were one of mine, you will remember that I was never red-hot about the past; preoccupied, instead, with the future.  Let me bring you up to this moment at our alma mater.

        We have been burgeoning on Hollingsworth Road since 1952 in a plant which Principal Poppell then identified accurately as "warehouse construction . . . the cheapest is always good enough for the public schools."  Once nestled cozily in an orange grove, we have erupted over every inch of land available, with eight main buildings, twenty-one pitiful portables, a newly-renovated administration building and a library; and a whole separate campus of the Harrison School of the Arts.  We have a superlative staff of nearly two hundred, an enrollment of two thousand, all dedicated to the proposition that LHS continue to be the fine old traditional school that is the hallmark of excellence, that it will always be, which other schools look to with ill-concealed envy.

        As for Mother Haley, she still holds court over whatever takes place in room 6, where her dear students regard her as so mature that she will fall into a stupor if they should act ugly, so they treat her with the degree of reverence she so richly deserves.   Just kidding.

         I miss every one of you who have blessed my life, and I hope your careers are as fulfilling as mine has been.  Let me know.

                                                                              Hazel  Haley

As you will see when you click on the link to Miss Haley below, she did indeed finally retire at the age of 90 at the end of the 2006 school year.  But for all of us who were privileged to sit in one of her English classes she will continue to be our inspiration as long as we live.  She says it is we who "have blessed [her] life," but that statement works in both directions!

To look at the huge number of pictures from the 50th anniversary celebration in 2002, you may click here!

To read more of the articles about Miss Haley and to see more pictures of her as the Lakeland Ledger has honored her these past few years, click here.  If you go to Google, as I did, you will find several more pages of articles about her. 

CLICK HERE to see many of the blogs and web sites that have been posted about Miss Haley.

To see pictures made since the 2002 anniversary celebration, go to this site that includes pictures made at a class barbecue for local residents in 2003 as well as a few pictures from monthly luncheons that have been on-going for the past several years.

Click here to see pictures from the 55th Mini-Reunion the weekend of April 27-29, 2007.

Newspaper clippings from 1952

In Memoriam

Webmasters:  Perry Sprawls
sprawls@emory.edu
Last Updated  May 17, 2024