It's been a short and eventful life for the first home of H.D. Woodson Senior High School. Some District schools were constructed in the 19th century and are expected to endure, with renovations, well into the 21st. The city's “only high-rise high school,” on the other hand, is going from concept to demolition in just a few decades.

Ward 7's first public high school opened in 1972 and is scheduled for demolition at the end of this month. And many residents, such as Mary Jackson – longtime Ward 7 activist, former ANC commissioner, parent and grandparent of Woodson students – have seen it all.

When her children attended – the last of four graduating in 1985 – Jackson recalls, Woodson “was the top in the city. Kids really took pride in the school. … It just stood out.”

Academically, athletically and musically, Woodson was “The Tower of Power” in those early decades. For students enrolled in the school's last 15 years or so, however, the story was one of decline.

“They know nothing about the Tower of Power. They never had that experience,” Jackson says of her grandchildren and other current Woodson students. “They couldn't shower after sports. The toilets didn't work. … The school system let the school go down.”

When Woodson's new building opens in 2010, Jackson believes, it can again be a resource and source of pride for the community, and “it will be up to a new group of kids to put their mark on the school.”

District-Wide Beacon
Alumni from Woodson's first two decades describe an enriching, challenging school experience filled with friends and fun.

Mark Roy ('78) describes how, as an eighth-grader, he was impressed by an unfamiliar marching band and captivated by the responses when he asked around about its source.

“New school … 12 stories tall,” Roy remembers being told, “… way over there in Northeast … only hand-picked teachers.” He read about Woodson's athletic and music programs – “such good things in those days.” A little over a year later, he was one of 1,000 new 10th-graders at Woodson.

The school was so popular by then that it was over capacity at 2,100 students. “But you didn't mind being in class with 30 kids,” Roy recalls. “Teachers could handle the classroom. … And it was fun – there were so many activities, a young faculty. You just had energy and vibrancy.”

Marya McQuirter ('82) grew up in Petworth and had been attending a small, private school – “65 students on one floor of a Presbyterian church” – when she decided to try public school. She meant to attend Woodson for a single semester, she explains, “just to say I'd done it.”

But Woodson offered McQuirter good teachers, a friendly student body, a close-knit group of college prep students – about 50 from a graduating class of 500, she estimates – as well as athletics and other activities. She stayed for her remaining two years of high school and now declares: “Those two years were the best years of my life.”

“There were problems with the building,” McQuirter acknowledges, such as “trying to hike it up to the seventh floor.” Still, she declares, “I loved the school, and I liked the building. I have nothing but wonderful feelings for the school.”

“I didn't even know how to read music when I got to Woodson,” says Cliff Humphries ('87), a lifelong resident of Ward 7. Developing the skills necessary to participate in band was an important learning experience for him as was completing life-guard training.  “Learning to play football was another notch that helped me get where I am today.”

Humphries credits Woodson's Business and Finance program with teaching him “the thought and mindset of owning, operating and managing a business – what should be done, how to research and find out how other companies are managing their business. … It benefited me a lot.”

Woodson classes later proved important in ways he didn't imagine at the time – he used algebra for years in his business, for example, and “home ec was a good class – it taught you things that you're going to be using for the rest of your life.” Even if you don't cook much, he says, you put those measuring skills to use in many ways.

With the background and confidence Woodson helped instill, Humphries opened his first business at the age of 21 – a heating and air conditioning company that he managed for 16 years. He now owns and manages the H Street Martini Lounge, which has contributed to the revitalization of H Street NE. Through both business ventures, he has retained his “day job” as a District firefighter.

Since its opening three years ago, the Martini Lounge has become a regular gathering spot for Woodson alumni to reminisce and stay in touch with the friends they made back when. At least in hindsight, attending Woodson was, without irony or qualification, a “great experience.”

Fading Light
For the community around Woodson, says longtime resident Edward Fisher, the school “was a beacon of hope and a focal point. … It had many innovative programs. The academic programs were stellar in the beginning. The band was coming through the community for special events. It was very promising.”

Dennis Chestnut, who grew up in Ward 7, agrees. “It was very exciting. The newness … the design was unique.” It had good enrollment and excellent academics – especially the marine science and business and finance programs. “It was very prominent athletically. The term ‘Tower of Power’ came from athletic power.”

Woodson's extensive facilities were used by adults as well as teens. Classes like the woodworking Chestnut taught from 1984 to 1994 were offered to adults through evening community school.

For the high school itself, excitement and success were sustained through the 1970s and 1980s, “when things started to affect enrollment, and that affected spirit,” Chestnut says. Population declined in the District and in Ward 7 particularly. Charter schools and other programs offered competition. Peculiar difficulties with the physical plant – unventilated swimming pool, high-maintenance escalators, e.g. – hit Woodson harder than many schools.

By the 1990s, Chestnut says, the school and its physical plant had declined substantially. His children attended only because of the special programs in which each participated – one in marine science and one in business and finance.

As an employee of the DCPS facilities department, Chestnut had firsthand opportunity to witness the physical plant deteriorate as repairs were delayed, and symptoms, instead of costlier causes, were addressed. Many community members saw the steady decay – often volunteering and advocating for repairs – but some also clung to pictures of brighter days.

Roy was among alumni too sentimental about the Tower of Power to want it razed, he says, until a tour, with Woodson's new design team, pointed out irreparable failings of the old building. Humphries was similarly against demolition until he responded to several deliberately set fires this year, saw conditions, and realized, “it's time for it to come down.”

A New Focus
Fisher wants to see the new Woodson become again a “focal point for the community.” He is especially concerned – as a program manager for workforce development at the University of the District of Columbia – to see that the new facility accommodates adult education. UDC programs will be moved temporarily to Friendship Collegiate but are expected to move with Woodson students, during the construction of the new facility, to Fletcher Johnson on Benning Road SE.

As a near neighbor of Woodson who remembers taking his children to its pool, Fisher is also eager to see the recreational facilities upgraded.

In addition to building modernizing, Woodson is undergoing program restructuring under “No Child Left Behind” legislation. The new building design supports a special “Science, Technology, Engineering and Math” (STEM) program – slated to begin in 2010. Many community members are uncertain about STEM, which replaces older programs, including the once prominent business and finance. But some believe that neither the program nor the building will ultimately make or break the new Woodson.

“It's the people who are going to make it whatever it's going to be,” says Chestnut. “Everyone is going to have to buy in, be stakeholders and make it a beacon again.”