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DEAR FELLOW LCHS BOBCATS

RE: LONDON CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL – THE END

London Central High School is closed and emptied.  At some point today (Friday 29 June) at what is now known as RAF Daws Hill, High Wycombe (and at what used to be USAF High Wycombe/High Wycombe Air Station) the keys were due to be handed over by the remaining LCHS DoDDS representative – thought to have been Will Watson (who was handling logistics and supply for the school) and handed on to US Navy and RAF officials at the High Wycombe base.

LCHS’s last Principal, Theresa Barba, had departed the day before.

The handover and closure follows nearly four weeks of packing, removal and cleaning activity handled by a number of different entities since LCHS had its last day of school in early June.

School items went to a number of different bases including Feltwell and Lakenheath.  A removals company called ‘Christ’ from Germany was processing the library and sending the books on to another DoDDS school in the UK.  A British company, which won a bulk removals contract from the US Defense Reutilization and Materials Office at Molesworth, was taking away  all the furniture from the schools and dorms that was not wanted in other DoDDS of US Military locations. They, under the supervision of a DRMO representative, were loading up truckloads of chairs, tables, desks, filing cabinets during my final visit to the school earlier this week.  Remaining DoDDS Office staff were moving papers in some of the grey NEX (Naval Exchange) Shopping Carts.  All over the place there were giant red dumpsters filled with broken or non-serviceable items.   

After having written (with extensive help from more than 30 teachers, administrators and staff members from across the years and the three campuses of LCHS) ‘From the Faculty Lounge’ as a look back at the history of LCHS through their eyes, I felt I wanted to be there at the end. 

The rule – as it was with elementary school West Ruislip which closed the year previously – was this: Imaging picking the building up and turning it upside down. Anything that falls out needs to be shipped out or remaindered. Everything that stays fixed remains with the building.

Principal Theresa Barba had kept aside old yearbooks that were surplus  (beyond ones they had shipped to the American Overseas High Schools Society museum in Wichita, Kansas which will serve as a repository of LCHS memorabilia) and was kind enough to pass them on to me.  Details of which ones are still available (and they are mostly from the 1980s on) will be placed on the fromthefacultylounge.com site in the coming week. They will be available on a 'first come first serve' basis with costs only covering postage and packaging.

During my visit I went through the dorms which were a mess with old clothes and books, papers, food, and quite a few pairs of sneakers and other junk that had been turfed out of closets and onto floors.  Computers and equipment had been moved from much of the school but the furniture was still in many of the classrooms.  

I went into Mansfield Hall – Trinity was already cleaned out locked up – and met with the cleaning crew – some of whom had been there working together for much of the last decade.   The rooms were all cleared and the rubbish piled high in the stairwells and hallways.   About the only indications that kids had been there were the name tags (some done on silver star and blue background Christmas Wrapping paper, that were on each former occupant’s door on the 3rd floor. For you older dormies, a few things had changed:
 
  1. There was CCTV in the building with a monitor at the front desk.  A big advance from my time when we had a sound ‘pick-up’ monitor.  
  2. Each of the doors had an electronic lock – one of those card slide lock systems.
  3. Because of the reduced numbers – each kid had a room to himself or herself!  A long cry from the days when the dorms were packed to the point of some kids having three in a room!
     

Moving on.  The hallway for what used to be the centre of the school – the 900 buildings – had various items scattered along it awaiting disposition.   The old Admin wing was stripped – the old Guidance area that used to be on the left side empty with peeling paint on the pillars by the window and a Monet reproduction still stuck to the wall.  The old faculty lounge was empty bar a sink on which sat an MWR tray and some plants.  The Principal’s office, which a week before had been filled, was empty – including the heavy four-drawer filing cabinet safe which had been removed.  I ran into a former Bobcat, Mike Milliken, who now works for DODDS in the UK on the computer side. We had a good 'catch up'.

The old AYA was being emptied.  The sign ‘ Home of the Bobcats’ which sat up there for many years, remains but there are efforts to save that.  The mural drawn by the class of 2001 is still there. It’s unclear what will happen to that building and all the others but we are in touch with the base commander about that.. The Hilltop Inn Cafeteria was still there just – many of the chairs and tables had gone though there were still a few pushed in one corner of the main dining room.  A lot of the kitchen equipment had gone, but not all of the cookers etc.  Several of the staff  including Rita who had been there sine 1983, and her sister-in-law, Sandra, were on hand just doing the final bit. I took a group shot of them in front of the building. We remembered Janey, Eric Weeks and Walter ‘Smitty’ Smith.  We recalled butter pats on the ceiling – something that apparently stopped when they went from supplying butter pats to placing a tub of butter on the counter, and tricks with the sugar and salt – in which, I hasten to add, I had no involvement!

Outside I walked by the old Starlight Theater – which has been closed to kids, teachers and others in recent years. .  The Big Gym was filled with furniture still awaiting disposition.  I watched art equipment and furniture being taken from the new buliding.  Glass vestibules from the Science room. History was, literally, going out the door on a forklift truck!  It was depressing to watch.

And so that was that.  

The book about London Central, From the Faculty Lounge, is now available (visit www.fromthefacultylounge.com for details or order through www.longdash.com).  Sometime during in the next two weeks on the fromthefacultylounge.com website, I plan to post pictures of the closing of the school. After that we hope to put up some videos and other items that I think would be of interest to former Bobcats.

We had a great school and, hopefully, many happy memories, but it will be one now only known in our minds and in our hearts.

Kind regards and safe journeys wherever you may be.