Kewanee Schools Foundation

Was this the way Stanley felt when he met Livingstone?
Was Admiral Peary thinking what I was thinking when he was the first human to lay eyes on the North Pole?
I stood there looking down the long, wide hallway in Central School and thought to myself, “So, this is The Tunnel!”
On our recent quest to find out more about the history of Kewanee High School via yearbooks, alumni kept mentioning memories of a place called The Tunnel. Then, one day, an older KHS grad called to tell us it was still there.
This “tunnel,” used by KHS students in the late 1930s, 1940s and 1950s between Central School and the old Kewanee High School, still existed in the present building.
When it was described to me (sorry, I didn’t go to Kewanee High School), I knew right away where it was — one of those things which has been there right in front of us all this time, only we didn’t know it.
Armed with my camera and notebook, I marched into the office at Central School and asked for permission to do some exploring and take some photos of something called The Tunnel. Nowadays, a person with a camera can’t just walk into a school and start taking pictures without risk of removal or arrest. So, checking in at the office, I was given an orange and black laminated pass to hang around my neck identifying me as someone who had permission to be where I was and doing what I was doing.
Before heading out on my mission, I asked Jenny Pierce-Smith of the Central office staff if they still called it “The Tunnell.” She pointed up to the super-wide screen hanging from the ceiling on the office wall with about two dozen individual mini-screens each fed by video cameras located throughout the building (something you also didn’t see in schools back in the day). There they were — three little screens — marked Tunnel North, Tunnel South, and Tunnel — showing what was going on from end to end that very second in that legendary piece of KHS history.
The Tunnel is a one-story hallway along the east side of the school. It parallels Central Gym on the west and on the east are now three sets of double windows which open onto the combination play area and parking lot on the east side of the school.
As I walked up and down the hall, I noticed a very large orange and black Central Steamers mural on the west wall, trophy cases and posters announcing school activities. It was a warm, bright and inviting place, well lit and still heavily used by student traffic, only younger. As I made a photographic record, lines of pupils closely watched by teachers made their way along the hallway. Considering it was mid-day, they were probably going to or from the cafeteria at the south end.
One teacher invited me outside where recess was being held to see the exterior view of The Tunnel, where you could see the three-story gymnasium, built in 1904, and the two-story addition and one-story “tunnel” forming stair steps up the side of Central School, built between 1936-38.
The north end of the concourse looks, I imagine, about the way it did in the 1930s, with brick walls, heat pipes running along the ceiling, and radiators mounted on the walls of the corridor. Midway, a small side hall opens into swinging wooden double doors, which appear to be original, and open into the gymnasium. Across the hall and just south of the current east entrance, the old canteen now serves as the concession stand for Central athletic activities.
The Tunnel was connected to the back (north side) of the first Kewanee High School, a fortress-like, four-story building which closed in the spring of 1955. It stood empty for about a decade, and was torn down, we’re told, in 1966.
Today, The Tunnel opens into the split-level Adela Wesebaum Addition which replaced it with the cafeteria and small gym on the two-story west side, and the one-story administrative offices of District 229 straight ahead at the end of a slightly narrower south hall. A bronze tablet with a portrait indicates Miss Wesebaum served as a school secretary in a number of district buildings between 1926 to 1968, when the new addition was completed and named in her honor. She was also secretary of the school board.
Central fourth through eighth graders still walk through The Tunnel every school day and probably don’t realize they are adding their memories to those of thousands of former KHS students in whose footsteps they now walk.

Eighty-five years ago, Kewanee High School — and Kewanee, for that matter — were far different places than they are today.
We got a glimpse of those days this week with a 1926 Kewanite found by Terry Wickey at an auction.
Terry was rummaging around the estate sale of the late Andrew Brady, a man, we are told, who was a collector of all sorts of things. Someone Mike and Frank from the History Channel’s “American Pickers” series would have liked to visit.
Among the assorted items was the 1926 Kewanee High School yearbook which caught Terry’s eye.
We did some checking on the Kewanee Public Library’s Yearbooks Online website at www.kewaneelibrary.org and found the earliest KHS yearbook in their file was from 1904. It was not called the Kewanite — the title was “Snap Shots — Together with a few time exposures.” It was published, as most KHS yearbooks were back then, by the senior class.
In 1905, however, we see the first book with “Kewanite” on the cover. 1904 was the year when what was described as the “old high school building,” the original Central School, was replaced with the “new high school building” which faced south toward Lyle Street. Photos of both buildings were included in the yearbook with the quote “Hail bright abode” under the new building.
In 1926, the school newspaper was called “The Tiger” and there was apparently no school nickname. The ‘26 yearbook contained a page of small photos of the 1925 football team working out at a 10-day camp at Indian Creek, and they were referred to several times as the “orange and black warriors,” so the school colors had been picked.
We scrolled forward through the yearbooks year by year and didn’t find a reference to “Boilermakers” until 1935. Obviously the named was picked because the Kewanee Boiler Company had started to earn worldwide recognition.
The 1926 Kewanite had a pirate theme and was described in the preface as a “treasure chest” of the past school year. The book is a thick 176 pages with a cardboard cover.
One of the features of old yearbooks I’ve always enjoyed is the artwork done by the students. Following the pirate theme, a strikingly beautiful senior named Harriet Helmer drew outstanding scenes of swashbucklers, ships and wenches on the front page of each section of the book.
Even though Berg & Dines promoted Kodak cameras as the “ideal graduation gift” in the advertising pages, there are far fewer pictures in the book than in those of today. Even though cameras were becoming popular — much like iPads today — the printing technology had not yet been developed to mass-produce photographs at reasonable cost.
The 1926 book, however, does include a rare set of four black and white photos of the inside of the big building, all taken in shadowy available light — the office, dean’s room, a place called the “social room,” and the gymnasium.
The interesting thing is that the gym is the same one now in use at Central School.
Originally, as the photo shows, the gym had only balcony seating. The current seats were installed in 1938 wheh the present-day Central School was built. Retired Central principal Ken Sullens said an old-timer who did the work revisited the school in later years and said the gym floor was left in place, but the rooms in front of it were raised several feet (don’t know why) which created the present 2 1/2-floor configuration.
Terry counted up photos of 80 seniors and 100 juniors in the two upper classes in 1926. Names many would recognize in the Class of ‘26 were Harry Ringstrom, Ted Good, and John Samara. The junior class (‘27) included future Kewanee mayor Em LIndbeck Sr., who, it turns out, was on the school board in 1938 when the “new” Central School was built. According to the yearbook, Lindbeck was named captain-elect of the next year’s football team “for his consistent ground-gaining which earned him the very appropriate nickname ‘Five Yards Lindbeck.’”
The freshman class (‘29) included Edward “Eddie” Ellis, who went on to work at major newspapers around the United States and, in his retirement, published the world’s longest diary. The book includes many of his memories of the days at old KHS.
I also found a family connection. My great-aunt, Ruth Gamble, was a member of the board of the first Kewanite in 1905. Her son, Malcolm McFall, was a KHS senior in 1926.
Something found in the 1926 Kewanite which would probably be impossible to include today due to shear volume, was eight pages in fine print of the names, addresses, occupations (or colleges) and spouses (if they had one) of KHS alumni. The oldest entry I found was a member of the Class of 1905.
The pages of ads in the back of the book are always fun to read. Some of the businesses who took out ads in 1926 who are still in business today included A.C. Taylor & Son. 105-109 W. Church St., which advertised Essex, Hudson and Chrysler automobiles (they still sell Chryslers), hardware and implements; Dooley Bros. Plumbing & Heating, then located at 106 W. 1st St.; and Good’s Furniture House which even then called itself “The Big Store” with the slogan “Everything delivered anywhere!”
Looking through old high school yearbooks is captivating. They are also a great source of information. Several years ago the Kewanee Public Library, with the help of a grant, put their entire collection of Kewanee and Wethersfield yearbooks on their website (www.kewaneelibrary.org) which is very easy to access and handy to use. I’ve got the site bookmarked on my computer and go to it frequently.
I’ve become interested in a Kewanee school landmark called “The Tunnel,” a hallway which connected Central School and the old high school. Every student used it, but since it was hidden and basically a functional feature of the building, it apparently wasn’t photographed very often, if at all.
Don Draminski, a 1952 KHS grad, steered me to his yearbook in which (online) I found a photo of students gathered around the snack bar which was situated in the concourse, but it doesn’t show anything else. If anyone out there has anything on “The Tunnel,” other than memories, please pass them on to us and we’ll pass them along in a column.
Thanks, again, to Terry Wickey for sharing an interesting glimpse into KHS history.