Mary D. Bradford High School

I graduated from high school in 1978 from Mary D. Bradford High School.  The day after I graduated I left Kenosha.  My parents had moved to California via Ohio at the beginning of my senior year so I was moving out west with them and then heading to BYU.  I have only been back to Kenosha since then 2 or 3 times.

Our high school was in downtown Kenosha.  A beautiful old building.  I didn't appreciate it for the amazingly beautiful place it was when I went to school there.  To a teenager it was just a school.  Now, it is a beautiful old building.  It is no longer Mary D. Bradford. A new Bradford was built and this building became an alternative high school.

LuAnne and I stopped by hoping they would let us wonder the halls.  They graciously let us do that and they even had one of the staff members come give us a tour.  It ended up that he also graduated in the class of 1978 and we had several friends in common including Mark Hoferitza and Bill Glaser (my high school boy friend)  He took us to some places we normally wouldn't have been able to go which was great such as the pool, the auditorium and the tunnel under the school that use to go to the old annex.  We had so much fun!!!

Here she is....

 

The thing I couldn't believe was how incredibly clean this school was for a high school!  The halls were spotless.

 Alumni Class of 1978.

The school looked pretty much the same as it did over 30 years ago when we were there.

I am sure I had never noticed the beautiful light fixtures when I was a student there.

And I had forgotten about the beautiful stain glass in the ceiling over the main stairwell.

And how incredible the old bathrooms were with their tile floors.  The bathrooms were spotless too!

And then we went into the auditorium.  I had forgotten how beautiful it was!

From there we went down into the basement below the stage.  There is a room there where students have signed their names over the many years.  Somehow we had never done it while students there so we did it now!

Fortunately I had a Sharpie in my purse.  I had a hard time remembering my name and signed it as my married name so had to go back and write in Best.  I also wrote the wrong date, forgetting the year we graduated.  Guess it was too long ago so my date is rather messy and I'm not sure what that S is at the end!!

Then we went into the tunnel.  The tunnel use to connect the main building to the annex.  The annex was another building with classrooms but soon after we graduated it was condemned and torn down.  The tunnel is still there and we walked through it.  It comes out into a small utility shed now in the parking lot.

We were allowed to use the tunnel on really cold, snowy days.

We also got to see the pool.  I use to hate PE when I had swimming.  I had it the first hour of the day and I'd have to go around with bad hair all day!!

We had such a fun time exploring the old high school!  She is a beauty!