Cary High Has an Education Tradition

September 3, 2010 - If you drive down Academy Street in Cary, you find that it ends at a city landmark, a site long associated with education in North Carolina.

Click here to view the video Cary's Education Tradition to see graduates recalling their high school days .

Doug Holleman, Class of 1941, was a standout on the basketball team in 1939-41.

Guy Mendenhall, Class of 1954, played basketball for the school and returned to serve athletic director.

Sharon Moore Blackley, Class of 1970, wanted people to know she was a Cary High Imp.

Audio Podcast

Listen to graduates discuss the Cary High education tradition.

After Cary was incorporated in 1871, Frank Page and community leaders opened a school they called Cary Academy at this site. In 1896, the school was incorporated as Cary High School. It became the first public high school in North Carolina in 1907.

“It had the big columns there and big wide steps going up to it,” said Doug Holleman, Cary High Class of 1941. “We used to make all kind of school pictures on the steps in front of the school.”

“The building they sold to the town at the head of Academy Street was where I went to high school,” said Bob Heater, Cary High Class of 1947. “I had been in the old building that was there prior to that to see movies, but it was torn down about 1939 and the one that is there now was built in place of it. I had that one as a right brand new building for all the way through for me. It was a first class facility.”

Doug Holleman was among the first Cary High athletes enshrined in the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame for his great years on the basketball team. He was the center.

“I never run into anybody that I couldn’t get a tip or jump ball,” said Holleman. “There wasn’t any seven-foot guys back then in the 1930s. I could play with any of them. I led the scoring and we went to the state finals in 1939, 1940 and 1941.”

Another star athlete was Guy Mendenhall who remembers when the new gym opened at the Academy Street.

“The new gymnasium which is used by Cary Elementary right now was built in 1953,” said Mendenhall. “We played our first basketball game in that gym in 1953. We played Wendell. And the afternoon before we played our first game, three of us were out there with our coach Simon Terrell putting up the rims. We never had a chance to practice in that gym and we had to put the rims up ourselves. “

Mendenhall says it was the demanding work on the farm in those days that led students to work hard at school.

“I remember some students in my class who worked on tobacco fields and cotton fields,” said Mendenhall. “They said once I get my high school diploma because I do not want to go back and do that anymore because it was very hard work. And this site right here is sitting on the Maynard tobacco field.”

In 1960, Cary High School moved to its current location on Walnut Street where the tobacco fields once stood. The Academy Street site became the new Cary Elementary School. Another generation of the Holleman family arrived at Cary High at its new location. Steve Holleman was Cary High Class of 1964.

“I remember in grade school and junior high, the word on the street back then “have you seen that new school yet? It’s beautiful. Why did they go way out in the middle of the woods to build the thing?” was the word on the street then,” said Holleman. “But I got here and got involved and then this became home and that was my memories of my dad and my junior high days, elementary days. They were all good, but my heart was here. There’s no question about that.”

Holleman played on the basketball team coached by Charlie Adams - a group of Cary High men still closely connected.

“To this day, we still get together,” said Holleman. “We have a reunion every year. We play golf. We have party. And we have meetings and each lunch together once a quarter. We’re constantly networking. And if I had a problem and I could make a phone call, I would have 20 guys in my living room probably before I could get the phone hung up good. And they are the right 20. They are the guys you’ve been to war with, so to speak. To me that’s powerful. There are so many people who don’t have that.”

Arriving at Cary High a few years after Holleman was Lee Mauney, Cary High Class of 1967. He remembers the 1960s in Cary as being like Mayberry.

“It was still very much like the 50s, pretty innocent as to what was going on outside of school,” said Mauney. “Everything for me pretty much revolved around athletics and my schoolwork.”

Mauney returned to coach and serve as athletic director with his whole family invested in Cary.

“My wife taught here. She taught at East Cary for 30 years,” said Mauney. “My son, both my sons, graduated from Cary and went to school here. My youngest son is a volunteer assistant coach here, so. It has had an impact. Cary High School is really our life. It always has been.”

Susan Blackley is a Cary High Class of 1970 graduate who devoted her teaching career to the school.

“I am very proud to be an Imp and certainly to be associated with Cary High School,” said Blackley. “We think everybody should know all about us. By being involved in student council as a student and later as a teacher, when we would go to different conventions and things, we would make sure that everyone knew we were the oldest public high school in North Carolina and that we did have a strong tradition and following. It’s very important to me to be from Cary.”

Kurt Glendenning is a Cary High Class of 1980 graduate and is the current athletic director.

“Everybody kind of grew up with each other. We were close,” said Glendenning. “It was fun because we had two different middle schools, or junior high schools at that time. We had West Cary and East Cary and we all kind of knew each other because we played against each other. But it got to the point where when we came to Cary High School we were all together.”

Glendenning takes pride in being a part of Cary High.

“It’s neat to me,” said Glendenning. “It’s a source of pride to be from Cary. And I think I got here during that transition time of the older Cary and then when IBM came and then the new Cary. There were only about 6,000 people here when I moved here. We know the city population is now probably over 140,000. But it’s a source of pride.”

The current principal of Cary High is Doug Thilman.

“I think the best thing about Cary High School right now is the tradition and that we can call upon over 100 years of academic excellence as a school and use that for future generations,” said Thilman. “For the freshmen starting this year, the class of 2014, we can tell them for over 100 years this institution has taught the best and the brightest of our state and of our world and now you are a part of that.

Cary High was the state’s first public high school and continues in that spirit as a leader in education in our community.

-wcpss-