School History
| Article Index |
|---|
| History of John R. Rogers High School |
| The Hillyard Heritage |
| The Beginning |
| A New Decade - A New School |
| Nine Month Job |
| Summer, 1931 |
| All Pages |
What’s in a Name?
This history text is adapted from Pirate Gold, A Memory Book, a booklet commemorating the Golden Anniversary of John R. Rogers High School in 1982. Thanks to alumna Grace (Ward) Kassa, for sending the material.
From Panthers to Pirates
Rogers was the third governor of Washington State and the first Democrat ever to be elected to that high office.
It was the name “Rogers” that brought about the switch from the Hillyard Panthers to the Pirates of Rogers. Because of its location, about a mile and one-half southwest of the HilIyard High School, and because it was to draw students from a substantially expanded geographic area, early determination was made to give Spokane’s new secondary school a new identification. In fact, some thought had been given to converting the old structures into a junior high school, which would retain the Hillyard name.
Spokane school district officials determined that the school should be named to honor the originator of the Washington State “Barefoot School Boy” law, legislation mandating broader financial support for public schools and designed to assure that all children in the state would be entitled to free text books.
The name of Rogers brought to mind the “Jolly Roger” which was the black flag with white skull and cross bones flown by Pirate vessels when the buccaneers attacked other ships on the high seas. Declaring loyalty to no specific country, pirates roamed the waterways of the world, bent on capturing ships in international trade.
For a while, Spokane’s North Side Pirates retained the purple and white school colors of Old Hillyard. They subsequently replaced the white with gold to represent pirate treasure and “Pieces of Eight,” the Spanish coins that pirates of old gathered from many of their seafaring victims and reportedly buried in the New World. The Rogers emblem, while still depicting the pirate theme, has been changed and modernized throughout the years, just as the costumes and uniforms of bandsmen, Pirettes, majorettes, yell and song leaders and athletic teams have changed.
A portrait of Gov. John R. Rogers was among the first pictures to adorn the hallways of the high school. Even before the formal dedication of Rogers on March 1, 1932, the children of the early governor presented the painting to the student body. The governor’s portrait is still hanging in the main corridor of Rogers near the principal’s office. Fernand Barrett, a former Hillyard resident, who had used early photographs and drawings by other artists to create the likeness, painted it. A similar portrait of Gov. Rogers also hangs in the Legislative Building in Olympia, the state capitol.
In appreciation for that gift, students of Rogers planted a tree on the school grounds in the spring of 1932 honoring Edward Rogers, son of the man for whom the school is named.
His support of education, and particularly his advocacy of free textbooks, helped get Rogers elected governor. Born in Brunswick, Me., in 1838, Rogers first studied pharmacy and practiced those skills in Mississippi until the Civil War, when he moved to Illinois and became a schoolteacher. From there he went to Kansas, where he broadened his interests to include farming, editing the Kansas Commoner, and politics. He was elected commissioner of Harvey County, but the West beckoned and he pulled stakes again.
Arriving in Puyallup, Wash., Rogers engaged in real estate and merchandising, but he still had the political bug. He was elected to the Legislature, where he served brilliantly in the mid 1890s. So enamored was he by the capitol city of Olympia, he moved there and was elected governor in the fall of 1896, as the candidate of a coalition of Democrats, populists and “Silver Republicans.” The breach within Republican ranks both nationally and statewide that year helped send Rogers to the governor’s mansion.
He won reelection in 1900 but died of pneumonia in the first year of his second term and was succeeded by Henry McBride, the Republican lieutenant governor from Seattle who finished that term but left office in 1905.