Blaze destroys Dunjee school site near Spencer
Even though it hadn’t been used as a public school for more than 40 years, Cornelious Anderson was sad to see his alma mater go up in flames Tuesday.
Oklahoma City firefighters responded to a report of smoke at the abandoned Dunjee High School building at 4300 Adair St. about 11 a.m. Tuesday. When they arrived, the north end of the building was engulfed in flames.
Investigators are still trying to determine a cause, deputy chief Marc Woodard said. The fire did about $250,000 in damage to the structure which had been valued at about $500,000.
The fire in the stone building was mostly out by 1 p.m.
Anderson, 71, received a call from a relative that the building was on fire. He got dressed and raced the two blocks to the school to see what was happening.
“It was blazing pretty high at that time,” Anderson said. “It’s sad to see.”
Anderson went to Dunjee from kindergarten through his high school graduation in 1959. He played football and basketball for the Tigers. It was a country school then, he said.
“The best memory was how we all knew each other and got along,” Anderson said. “We had a lot of successful people come out of Dunjee.”
Dunjee opened in 1935 as a segregated school serving black students in Spencer. The school closed in 1972 and was vacant for many years before it was sold by Oklahoma City Public Schools to a private landowner, Theotis Payne, a Dunjee graduate. The school was named for Roscoe Dunjee, the longtime editor of the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch.
One of the things Anderson loved about the school was getting to know those who taught him.
“At Dunjee, the teachers you started with in grade school, that’s who you had all the way through to high school,” he said. “That’s the part the kids today don’t know about. There was a lot of pride in that school.”
Anderson said Dunjee alumni hold a reunion every other year. He said there will be one this year.
As the fire burned, neighborhood children went to the scene to watch the firefighters work. Garrett Helms, 13, and Lucas Foster, 14, weren’t aware of the school’s history but wanted to see what the commotion was about.
“We heard the sirens, so we looked outside and saw what was happening and saw the smoke,” Garrett said. “We came up here and everyone was asking us how it got started. I’ve never seen a fire like this before, maybe on TV, but not this close.”
Lucas said he never thought much about the school before Tuesday.
“I’ve seen it as just an abandoned school,” he said. “But it’s sad to see it burn up like that.”
Anderson laments the fact most kids in the area don’t know much about the school. It was closed before many of their parents were born, he said.
“It was kind of sad when they closed it, because there was nothing up there anymore,” he said. “I got to see it from kids being around and going to that school to no kids at all.”