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The original Parry McCluer High School is turning 100 years old this year. To call attention to this milestone, the Blues Educational Foundation has commissioned a limited edition centennial print that will be unveiled this Monday, Sept. 25, in the Parry McCluer Middle School auditorium, from 4 to 6 p.m.
Artwork on the print depicting various views of the Parry McCluer school through the years, as well as pictures of the school's namesake, Professor J. Parry McCluer, and Yosemite Sam, mascot for the Fighting Blues, was done by artist Lisa Floyd. She is the artist who has done many of the outdoors murals on numerous buildings around Buena Vista in recent years.
Floyd drew inspiration for the artwork for the centennial print by speaking with Francis Lynn, the city's unofficial historian and author of “Fesser McCluer: The Life and Times of J. Parry McCluer” and “Buena Vista: The Bud Not Yet Blossomed.”
The cornerstone for the original PMHS structure, the section of the building at the corner of 23rd Street and Chestnut Avenue, was laid in a patriotic ceremony on July 4, 1923. Construction took about six months and students began taking classes in the new building the following February.
The Buena Vista School Board, in a special meeting on Nov. 29, 1923, voted to name the school after Mc-Cluer, the division's then-ailing superintendent who had led the schools for 33 years. The school was dedicated on April 22, 1924. McCluer died that September.
The division's administrative offices are now housed in the original section of the old Parry McCluer School. A 1950s addition to the building has held Parry McCluer Middle School the past 22 years. The “new” Parry Mc-Cluer High School building opened in 2001 at Robinson Gap.
The centennial print includes pictures of the first Buena Vista school, a white wood-frame building at Chalk Mine Run that was constructed in 1889; a brick building that subsequently housed the school; bleachers filled with spectators at a football game in the 1950s; and different views of the old Parry McCluer school that was bounded by 23rd and 24th streets, and Chestnut and Magnolia avenues.
The Blues Educational Foundation is selling 500 limited edition centennial prints for a price of $40 each. Proceeds are to benefit the foundation, which provides grants for classroom supplies to Buena Vista teachers.
