Some students in Beaumont area face consolidation this term

BEAUMONT, Texas—They greeted and embraced each other with the halting familiarity of longago friends separated by time and distance—reminding each other of names, posing for pictures and dancing.

The Beaumont Enterprise reports 36 years after the Hebert and Forest Park junior classes learned they wouldn't finish high school at their alma maters, and 35 years after they became the first graduates of West Brook, the class of 1983 recently gathered at the Gig to kick off their reunion weekend.

They recalled voting on a name, a new mascot and choosing the colors red and blue, which covered the tables of the Crockett Street venue and the T-shirts they wore to a picnic, which read "the birth of a legacy."

They told stories of pep rallies, parties and mostly of their football team's miraculous run to the 5A state championship, an unprecedented accomplishment by a firstyear school.

The mostly white Forest Park Trojans and the predominantly black Hebert Panthers, forced under one roof by a federal desegregation order, remembered over and over what that title meant to them—"it brought us together."

The reunion was held less than a month before the Ozen Panthers and the Central Jaguars report for their first day of school as the Timberwolves of Beaumont United, a similarity that the inaugural Bruins noticed.

"With the merger of Central and Ozen going on, this shows it can be done," Sharon Durley said.

As a junior, learning that their Panther Pride would come to an end and that she wouldn't graduate from the same school as her older siblings was "devastating," Durley said. "It was an adjustment."

"I remember all the adults fighting" before the schools merged, Anne Lydahl said. "And I remember being relieved" when school started and the turmoil of the previous year didn't carry over into the hallways.

Stennie Gerard, now an assistant principal at the Beaumont Independent School District's South Park Middle School, recalled her first reaction to the consolidation: "The students were thinking, 'What are the adults doing?'"

She knew that she and her Hebert classmates had received old books and equipment from Forest Park as hand-me-downs, and she knew "the parents wanted something better for all the community."

She credited "very strong" teachers and coaches with helping ease the transition. "They were teaching not only the subject matter," she said, but gave students space to work through issues.

"I remember, once, a conversation with a Forest Park student who said, 'The only black person I've seen is my nanny,'" Gerard said. "We had a lot of questions, and they gave us the opportunity to sit and talk."

"It was scary, but then it was exciting," said Robin Mayfield, who remembered being upset about the consolidation and about being moved to the Forest Park campus, which became "West Brook Senior High" for juniors and seniors.

Freshmen and sophomores attended the Hebert campus for the first year, before the 10th grade was moved to the larger West End campus, leaving only the ninth grade at what became known as "Little Brook."

Like Lydahl, John Bowman Jr. remembered the arguments and turmoil that preceded the merger. "In the media, everyone was saying there would be all these problems," he said, but when the students were left to themselves, those didn't materialize.

There were changes in the classroom, which he said prepared him for college—teachers were stricter than he was used to at Hebert, and "I read more books my senior year than all my first three years."

"It was forced upon us, but it helped us all grow," he said. "I got to share their culture, they got to share mine. It prepared me more for college and for my life."

"Growing up, I was taught some racist things" said John Garrod, who recalled "a lot of fear and ignorance" leading up to the merger.

When school started, he said, "I get into classes and I'm looking around and there are black students who are every bit as capable, every bit as intelligent. And all that stuff I've been told just doesn't hold up," he said. "It really started crumbling things I'd been taught."

The beginning of the school year was "chaotic," Yolonda Forbes said, as "old Hebert and old Forest Park were bumping heads." But when the football team started winning, "the whole community backed us."

"Thank God for football," she said.

"It was like it was the team of destiny," said Richard Tyner, an assistant football coach whose wife, Bonnie, wore their championship ring to the reunion.

After losing four games early in the season under immense pressure from the community, head coach Alex Durley was told to stop worrying about fielding an equal number of white and black players and instead "to play the best players."

"That turned it around, it was just unbelievable," Tyner said. There were 40 seniors on the team and 11 signed to play college football, according to Enterprise archives.

While Tyner said the staff felt pressure in the first weeks of the season, the players were shielded from it, according to Darrell Colbert, who went on to play for the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs.

"For me, it was going to school and playing football," he said. "I don't remember pressure, but I remember we didn't like the losing part." The Hebert Panthers "hadn't lost a lot" before the schools merged, he said.

"Coach Durley and the coaches did an awesome job making us understand what we had to do and keeping us together," he said. When that happened and they started winning, they were rewarded with playing six weeks in a row in Houston, including several times at the Astrodome, then home of the Houston Oilers.

"We'd say 'the 'Dome is our home,'" Colbert said. "In the playoffs, everyone traveled to the games," he said. "It really did something for the community."

Gerard, who was a co-captain of the drill team, said the school's activities helped the students interact and get to know each other.

After overcoming the challenge of blending Forest Park's high-kicking routines with Hebert's showband style, "everyone realized we were all just teenagers," she said. "There's no doubt that Coach Durley and the football team and the different organizations and extracurriculars brought us together."

Alumni of the two schools came together to cheer for the new teams, though some still wore their Trojan and Panther gear to games while they carried red and blue rally towels that read "Paw Power."

Band members Lillie Hawkins, Wanda David and Dawn Pickens took credit for creating the new slogan. At the reunion, they held their hands in the air like bear claws and cheered to demonstrate. "We're the ones that came up with that," Pickens said.

"After we won a playoff game, all the radio stations, even the country ones, played 'Another One Bites the Dust,'" said Wade Bourgeois.

At a pep rally before the state championship game, other Southeast Texas schools came to cheer on the Bruins, alongside what seemed like the entire city. Thousands filled the stands at their away games.

They'd caravan to Houston, week after week, painting things like "Beat Memorial" and "Beat Bell" on their cars with white shoe polish, Charean Williams said. The NFL reporter, who will be inducted into the media wing of the Pro Football Hall of Fame this summer, said the class's story, titled "Remember the Bruins," was centered around football.

"A lot of people don't realize how powerful that was," Bourgeois said of the victory. It gave everyone something new to root for, instead of mourning the loss of the old schools and teams.

Jeffrey August, who played on the team, said it felt like "the first time Beaumont really came together."

Now, he runs the class of 1983's Facebook page, where he regularly posts his classmates' pictures from their yearbook along with newspaper clippings from the year. "I look at it now and see how everyone went on with our lives, and I see a bond between us," he said.

The consolidation of Forest Park and Hebert, then part of South Park ISD, is only one of several in the city's history that offer a road map for a smooth transition for Ozen and Central this year.

While theirs was prompted by the lingering segregation that required a federal court order to break down, rather than Tropical Storm Harvey, which closed Central, the Bruins offered advice to the students forced to accept a change driven by circumstances beyond their control.

Gerard, whose former students at South Park and Smith middle schools will both go on to Beaumont United, said the incoming Timberwolves should get involved in activities and "be part of the new beginning."

"The Beaumont United slate is clean," she said. "They get to write the message."

"It's just high school," said Sherrie Fielder. "Don't let circumstances cause you to not enjoy that last year."

The consolidation, which was announced in January, has prompted many concerns about fights, school safety and the logistics of bringing the students together on the Ozen campus and combining their classes, teams and activities. Some have also raised questions about equity between Beaumont United and West Brook, and about the courses and activities offered there. The new school, and its students, will be under a microscope this fall.

Tyner, who coached in 1982 alongside Beaumont United's head coach Arthur Louis, quoted Alex Durley, whose name was put on the stadium at West Brook after winning the championship.

"Durley used to say, pressure bursts pipes," he said. "The only pressure comes from inside yourselves."

"Go over with a positive attitude," Colbert said. "Listen to your teachers and listen to your coaches. Everything else is out of your control."