Dad's Story Part 15

Willis Ericksen- High School Graduation

Great Falls, Montana

-1929 – 1933-

           I started my freshman year of High School in the old high school building near downtown Great Falls.  I remember enjoying Freshman English because it consisted of mainly reading English literature.  We read a lot about Roman and Greek mythology.  I also took algebra, which was very difficult for me.  The other classes I took that year have mostly faded from my memory.  

Great Falls High School

          During my sophomore year of high school I had the pleasure along with about 2,000 other students, of breaking in a brand new high school building, which was a marvelous structure.  It was a two-story brick building.  On the west side of the campus was a modern football stadium with grass turf and floodlights for night games.  This was the first high school in the state of Montana to have a lighted football field.  On the north end of the school building was the double gymnasium that had a large folding door that divided the area into two full size gyms for boys and girls PE classes.  With the doors open there was room on the north and south side for bleachers in addition to balcony seating for basketball games on a court that ran east and west.  On the far south end of the building was a beautiful auditorium that could seat over 2,000 people.  The stage and lighting equipment were the finest and most modern available.  There were footlights and overhead lights with banks or red, yellow and blue lights that were controlled by a huge switching and mixing panel where the different colored lights could be mixed to make all different colors of the rainbow.  This auditorium was as good as any theater in the State. 

            Another outstanding feature of this building was its mechanical arts department.  There was a fine mechanical drawing room, a wood working shop, a tin (or metal) shop, an electrical shop, a print shop and machine shop.  During my three years at the school I took three years of mechanical drawing, one year of electric shop, and one year of machine shop. 

            During our first year in Great Falls, I started taking
saxophone lessons from Mr. Richards who had a boy’s band that practiced at the YMCA.  At this time music and the band was just a sideline with Mr. Richards; his main job was with the Great Falls Tribune Newspaper.  I soon was good enough to play alto saxophone in the Great Falls Boys Band.  

        The music department had a large room for the band, and another large room for the orchestra.  The school hired Mr. Richards the first year the new building was opened, to direct the high school band.  So I played in the band the three years that I was there.  I started off on the alto sax, and the last year I played the school’s baritone sax.  The band played at all the football and basketball games, and each year we prepared for a big band concert that was held in the auditorium.  We worked on this all year long and it was really good.  The special numbers like the saxophone sextet I played were all memorized.  There were also instrumental solos, trios, duets, etc as well as the numbers played by the entire band.  There were no high school marching bands in those days like they have today.

12th Grade report card

            The other subject that I remember taking besides the one already mentioned were English, two years of French, history, physics, geometry, advanced algebra, and trigonometry.  I had to go to summer school after flunking my sophomore English composition class.