My mom and grandmother are always so proud to sing their high school’s alma mater. I thought they were just being silly when they were getting all teary eyed and I never really understood that up until now. After I graduated high school last year, when going back to events or watching recorded events I would hear our alma mater differently. I too would feel honored and get teary eyed, and I just graduated last year. To me, our alma mater represents all of the memories that I had from my high school days and it is overwhelming because it’s my home, even if it is being torn down soon.
I am proud to say I was part of the 2015 graduating class of James M. Coughlin High School (CHS). For those of you who don’t know my school, it is part of the Wilkes-Barre Area located in the heart of downtown Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My high school was first opened in 1909 making it 107 years and that in itself is something to be proud of. Not only are we a long running school, but we also have the oldest, continuously published school newspaper, The Journal, in the nation. We had various sports medals and awards lined up in our main lobby along with many, many medals and honors from our small, yet accomplished band that is so familiar to me. All these accomplishments are amazing, but they are not the reason why I hold my school dear to my heart. To me, CHS was not just my high school, it was my home. I loved walking in every morning, probably running a tad late, saying good morning to the security officer, principal, and a few teachers in the main lobby, and then sprinting up to my calculus class. I loved almost every class I enrolled in and not only the school lessons, but also the life lessons all my teachers taught. I loved that feeling I would get when lunch arrived knowing the most fun part of my day just began. I loved that, when the 9th period bell rang, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere because I had a meeting for drama club, math club, German club, the yearbook or The Journal staff, band, or orchestra. I loved the fact that probably 90% of my fellow classmates, teachers, and staff knew my name and that I knew all of theirs in return. My school was my life, it was like my home, because it had my family there.
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Coughlin has been in the local news a lot lately because our main building has recently been closed for safety concerns due to its’ aging interior and exterior, so our upperclassmen have been moved to our newer building and underclassmen have been transferred to a refurbished school not far away. As our hard working school board tries to fathom just how they are going to juggle the building of a new school, they also have to figure out what they are going to do with the students, the teachers and the staff in the meantime.
Just like any other 107 year olds, my school is suffering from old age and will probably die this summer. With all of this being brought to my attention and kept in my thoughts I am not ashamed to say I am getting extremely sentimental about my good ole alma mater. After all it was where I spent the past four years of my life. That building is where I created bonds that will last a life time, where my friends and I laughed and created beautiful memories that I can look back on forever, where I ate breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner, where I participated in relentless band and orchestra practices, where I found my love for math and teaching. It was my home and always will be. Yes, it was falling apart everywhere, yes, the blinds are older than my grandmother, yes, the bathrooms were kinda-sorta, really gross and yes, I cut my finger on the rusty window frame, but that added character. Losing it is like losing a piece of my heart and soul. I loved that my school was unique because that’s just it, it was mine, so when it finally hit me that my home was going to be gone forever I could barely speak.
The first day of my freshman year my friends and I got so lost trying to get to one of our classes we ended up on the balcony of our auditorium trying to figure out how we got there and how we would get out. The last day of my senior year I knew that school like the back of my hand. Recently, I was able to go back and observe my teachers as a requirement for my major. A lot has changed since then, and the one thing that has stayed stable is my school, not physically, but metaphorically, because it was always my go to place for the last 4 years. So I just wanted to give a heartfelt thank you, to CHS, for all that it has given me throughout my teen years, by writing this and thinking about my memories. Thank you for being a great school. Thank you for putting up with all the abuse that we kids have given for 107 years. Thank you for the opportunities and challenges. Thank you for allowing me along with my fellow classmates to be the last graduating class of the full entire complete one and only one school of James M Coughlin. Thank you for letting me sing the National Anthem at all your football games. Thank you for my graduation day, one of the best days of my life, where I got to honor my school and class by writing and performing the class of 2015’s song and writing and giving the class oration speech. Thank you Coughlin for everything you have been through, wave the red and blue!
