Scatter shooting while wondering how even former Superintendent Nolan Estes seems good these days … .
The Wildcats finished 12th out of 73 AAAA North Texas high schools in the Dallas Morning News All-Sports Tabulations. Our total of 71.5 cumulative points placed us ahead of new suburban powerhouse, Colleyville, and our old nemesis of 1969, Wichita Falls, among many others.
Our point total was also higher than 42 AAAAA powerhouse schools such as McKinney, Richland, L.D. Bell, Lamar, Garland, Mesquite, Allen and Plano East. Awarded the highest possible score were Team Tennis, Volleyball, Boys and Girls Swimming, Boys and Girls Soccer, Wrestling and Boys Golf.
This year the boys did as well as the girls, who have lead us to consistently high rankings in the annual competition. Also, for the first time in my memory, the boys bested the girls in the class rankings with Stephen Milbank and Jordan Munn as the top grads. Stephen will attend Yale and Jordan will go to the University of Texas.
In fact Woodrow came in third in all DISD (including the larger schools) in scholarship money. The class of 2000 won about $1.5 million in scholarships for a class of just over 200. That’s about $7000 per graduate, if you divide to get the average amount. Are you ready to secede and take LSD — the Lakewood School District — public? Or maybe I just have a high from Lone Star Donuts or some other hallucinogenic.
Avalon has lost its anchors. I once wrote that the picturesque path was the most Woodrow of all Lakewood streets. Someone wrote to tell me that it should be Meadowlake, and now that title may be undisputed. Bill “Bulldog” Cunningham ’49 has moved to a deluxe apartment in the sky. Rounder Katherine Higginbotham Russell ’34 has moved to a retirement home. Woodrow Hall of Fame defense attorney Charles Tessmer ’38 is keeping mum on his new digs but has been spotted at the Lakewood Minyard’s. Hannah Harty Collier ’37, perhaps the classiest Wildcat of this corner of Avalon and Brendenwood, recently passed away. What a gracious and lovely lady was she… .
It was also sad to note the passage of Wallace Savage, of our first class of 1929. In the Woodrow directory he listed himself simply as “retired.” Modesty was this former Dallas mayor’s forte. He also was a war hero, successful businessman, graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School, and co-founder of the Dallas Academy. He served as co-chair — with the late W.W Fair, also 1929 — of the wildly successful 50th anniversary celebration in 1979. I remember how he heaped praise and credit for the event on everyone else. He joins his late wife Dorothy in a special part of Heaven. They were perhaps as preservationists and people the most important of the 20th Century in East Dallas.
