Moving Memories

Edgewater High School students are moving to an $83 million campus this month, and some of the icons that have helped define EHS are being given places of honor in the Eagles’ new nest.

EHS Basketball Court

The big “EHS’’ at center court in the old gym will be carefully cut out, framed and displayed in the new gym. Eagle emblems elsewhere on the old floor will be auctioned to raise money for the school.
 

Totems

Edgewater and Boone high schools—with Eagles and Braves as mascots, respectively—opened on the same day in 1952. And the totems of the respective schools have borne the brunt of the heated rivalry over the years, with Edgewater’s wooden original enduring choppings, totem-nappings, spray-paintings and toilet-paperings, all in good fun, of course. That mother of all totems has a place of honor atop a lighted stand in the administration building of the new Edgewater school. There are two other totems on campus—another wooden one at the south end of the football field, which will remain there, and a hard-foam specimen, which has been placed on the new cafeteria patio and has an appointment with some art students for refurbishing.
 

Eagle Mosaic

This tile icon, dedicated by the Class of 1959, resided at the original entrance to the old school, on the south end. And if you walked on it back in the day, you could be in big trouble, to the point of being forced to clean the bird art with a toothbrush. Later, a low brick wall was built around the mosaic (and presumably toothbrush sales in College Park declined). The class got the idea of creating the revered symbol from a scene in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which James Dean catches hell after stepping on the insignia of his new high school. The mosaic is being relocated to just off the outdoor dining patio. There will be no wall, but the pride of ‘59 will be in a spot where students can’t easily tread.
 

Wooden Eagle

Carved by a Tennessee mountain craftsman, this imposing figure has had a place of honor in front of the speaker’s stand during graduation ceremonies for more than a decade. When not giving its blessing to departing students, it will reside in the administration lobby of the new school on a platform that bears the inscription: “May the pride of being an Edgewater Eagle be with you always.”