As part of a nationwide campaign, students at three Tampa schools researched their schools' rich past.
By ELISABETH DYER
Published April 30, 2004
Jean Patrick, 91, met recently with fifth-graders at Lee Elementary, a technology magnet school on Columbus Drive, to talk about student life decades ago and the role of the cupola, a central fixture on the school roof.
"It had a real loud bell," said Patrick, a principal at Lee in the 1940s. "You could hear it about a block and a half (away), so if you were late, you knew it."
Nearly 100 years have passed since neighborhood craftsmen built the English Colonial style school and its octagonal cupola. The school is the second oldest elementary school in Hillsborough County, behind Gorrie, in Hyde Park.
Today, Lee students, with the help of Tampa Preservation Inc., are digging into the school's rich past by conducting research, neighborhood tours and interviews with alumni.
It's all part of a nationwide campaign called Save Our History to get students excited about history. Led by the History Channel and the White House's Preserve America, the project rewards students' efforts in preserving the past.
Representatives from the History Channel visited Lee Elementary last week to see what students at three historic Tampa schools have learned. The school, with its dark wood floors and hallways trimmed with wainscoting, marked the first stop on a 10 city tour.
Lee, Orange Grove Middle and Hillsborough High school students showed off their work to History Channel vice president Libby Haight O'Connell, Hillsborough schools Superintendent Earl Lennard and Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.
Students from Orange Grove, an arts magnet school in Ybor City, brought one of three trunks they have filled with artistic memorabilia from time periods covering the school's history, which dates to 1926.
Students from Hillsborough High, in Old Seminole Heights, which opened in 1927, brought designs for a coffee table book highlighting the school's Gothic architecture.
In May, Save Our History will award 15 out of nearly 600 schools a $1,000 grant and a trip for two students and one teacher to Washington D.C., where they will compete for three, $10,000 prizes.
Save Our History pulled in about 5,500 students from across the country to work on preservation projects in Tampa and nine other cities: Chicago, New York, Atlanta, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.
"I think if you get young people excited about local history and about projects they have a sense of ownership," O'Connell said. "Instead of just reading about it in a textbook, they can actually talk to somebody who worked in a cigar factory."
At Lee Elementary, the program has spurred plans for a centennial anniversary book, If Our Cupola Could Talk: A View From the Top, to be completed in 2006, when the school turns 100.
First-grader Marc Velez's sketch of the cupola will appear on the contents page next to classmate Michelle Feliciano's sketch of the columns with Ionic scrolls that border the front porches. Michelle's mother also attended Lee.
Robin Gonzalez, the education coordinator for Tampa Preservation Inc., worked with more than 600 Tampa students to plan their preservation projects. The nonprofit group is dedicated to preserving Tampa's historic neighborhoods and structures.
Gonzalez told students at Lee how Tampa expanded in the early 1900s into a wooded highland dubbed Tampa Heights, home of their school.
"People moved up from Hyde Park and Ybor City because they were worried about mosquitoes and malaria," said Gonzalez, whose father attended Lee in the 1920s.
Back then, Columbus Drive was a sandy road called Michigan Avenue. A streetcar track ran in front of the school.
"You could hop right on one at recess," said student Javier Maldonado, 10.
Students learned their school was the first in the county to serve lunches. It also became the county's first elementary magnet in 1993.
Before coming to Tampa from New York, O'Connell, the historian-in-residence for the History Channel, brushed up on Tampa's history.
"I hadn't realized the richness of the past that's here," she said.
