At the second annual Sisters With an Agenda (SWA) community day, dedicated to the old Germantown High School (GHS), alums spanning different generations of the school’s history came together to keep the spirit and memory alive.

The Sunday afternoon event saw a heavy flow of foot traffic across the property’s big green front lawn. Attendees got to shop with businesses, get resources from community organizations, play interactive activities, eat grilled hamburgers and hot dogs (for free), and alums got to connect with the Germantown Alumni Association.

“It’s great to see so many alumni out here doing phenomenal work; when I look around, it’s just a moment of joy, and it’s also us just ushering a memory that’s going to last,” said SWA founder and 2006 GHS alum, Taja Morris. 

Morris is one of three organizers, alongside fellow GHS alums Shakera Frazier of Keys to Success Learning Center and Maya Malcolm of the Belfield Advisory Council, who also organized the event.

“[At this event], I’m super excited to be able to bring joy, laughter, and conversation,” Morris said. “I’m building activities to create lasting memories for people, and to have them connect and to see the different resources in Germantown.”

Morris says another goal of this event is to amplify resources and provide an opportunity for the community to connect. 

“It was a great opportunity to be around some of the folks I went to school with, people from the community, and people from other graduating classes,” said State Rep. Andre Carroll, who is a GHS alumnus from the class of 2009. “It had a sense of community that a lot of us desire to bring back.”

Former Bears share their favorite memories

Some alumni shared their feelings and memories about their time at the school, as the longtime community members strolled through the reunion with a nostalgic feeling.

Marcia Green from the class of 1972 first mentioned what stuck out to her when thinking about her time at GHS and the relationships she formed.

“I loved my math and English teachers, and I enjoyed the years that I came here,” Green said. “Especially my friends I went to school [with], like the [person right next to me], I’ve known her since fourth grade, and we’re 70 now. It’s a blessing that we’re still around and still have our health.”

When Rep. Carroll was asked about his favorite memory as a student, he said that some of his “fondest memories are being in some of the classes that you don’t start off loving, but then by the end of the class, you really fall in love with the experience.”

For him, this was African American Studies, which he referred to as Mr. Jackson, whom he humorously remembers as “old-school” and “by the book.”

“It was a journey knowing how to be a student in his class, and I learned a lot from him. He became one of my favorite teachers,” Carroll said, mentioning Mr. Jackson, who he says passed away a few years ago. “I had the opportunity to run into him a few years after graduation, and that would be my last time getting the chance to talk to him.”

SWA founder Morris recalled a ninth-grade memory of her class traveling to New York City for a trip, as she heavily values the effort the school made that day to go above and beyond.  

“We went to the Apollo theater [in Harlem, New York]; a great field trip,” she said. “Principal Randolph was her name, and there’s certain people you never forget; She took us to New York City [where] we traveled to different parts of the city.”

Morris also voiced a common theme that was echoed by others as well.

“When you talk about joyous experiences, the other thing I can think about is graduation,” Morris said, while mentioning the day that marked the commencement of that era.

There was a long-standing tradition at the school called “The Great Walk,” where the seniors walked around the four-story property and nearby streets while marching in white attire. In total, there have been 146 graduating classes from 1917 to 2013.

Although the walk is something that can be remembered as joyous for some graduates, other former students generally mentioned graduation as being joyous because it marked the end of adolescence.

Alongside the office of Rep. Carroll, 8th District Councilmember Cindy Bass and State Senator Sharif Street co-sponsored the event and were among the many tables offering resources. 

Elected officials and their offices also issued citations of recognition to the event’s organizers before Morris issued awards to community leaders Victoria Best, Mazzie Casher, Haneef Hill, and the late Deborah Gary, Morris’s aunt.

Catherine Michini, a 21-year math teacher at GHS from 1992 through the school’s closure in 2013, also shared her perspectives from her tenure at the historic property. 

She expressed that there is “so much history here and I’m just so glad that it’s alive in people’s memories and actions, [which is] rewarding and satisfying.”

“I remember so many of my students and some of the fun [activities] we did,” Michini said. “We were definitely a family between teachers and kids.”

She attributes the cooperative and loving atmosphere to a collective desire to see the school in better condition despite being underfunded.

Bonds created between Michini and her students continue to live on, as she has had the chance to interact with some she used to see throughout the GHS hallways in other similar spaces.

“After the school closed, I moved to teach at Girls High. In this last school year, I’ve had four students whose parents I taught at Germantown High,” she said. “It makes me proud; I’ve dealt with a few students who are now parents, so I see them in parent meetings.”

Thoughts on the old school’s closure linger

Marcia Green’s longtime friend, Sharon West, echoed similar thoughts about how certain teachers and friends made her time memorable. But, she does feel the property could’ve been put to a different use.

“It should’ve been turned into a charter school rather than not letting it be a school at all, it’s too big,” she exclaimed.

Rep. Carroll remembers the fight to prevent both the closures and the redevelopment of the old school, which led to the building’s current use as an apartment complex.

“We are appreciative that the [developer is] engaging with the community and giving us the opportunity to come back and share the space that meant so much to a lot of people. We can give kudos when they’re due while also recognizing that the [transformation] was a huge loss for a lot of people,” the State Rep said.

“When you graduate high school, there’s a lot of sentiment that goes into the opportunity to return and give back, and that will be forever lost for a lot of us.”

Nonetheless, Carroll was excited at the opportunity to reconnect with old classmates and connect with others across classes.

“A lot of the folks who graduated around my time really haven’t had the opportunity to have real reunions because a 10-year reunion for myself would’ve been in 2019, and unfortunately, at that point, we were fighting to keep the school from turning into luxury apartments.”

Like Carroll, the different recollected visions for the building didn’t stop the collective celebration of the school, and still found the moment necessary for the community to have.

Vendors at the event, such as Myah Chandler, owner of Mindful Sensation Cultivating Life and Wellness, didn’t attend the school, but immediately witnessed the impact it had on the community.

“When you take a building, turn it into something else, and make it look different [inside], you kind of forget what it looks like,” Chandler said. “This is a very important event to have for this community [to honor the years] before everything changed with the school.”

While this was the second annual Sisters With an Agenda community event, which changes locations every year, Morris hopes to bring GHS its own recurring gathering.