General William J. Palmer High School

This article is on the high school located in Colorado Springs. For the high school located in Monument, Colorado, please see Lewis-Palmer High School.

General William J. Palmer High School
A Tradition of Excellence
Location
301 North Nevada Avenue Colorado Springs, Colorado
Coordinates	38.839°N 104.820°W / 38.839; -104.820
Information
Type	Public Secondary
Established	1874
School district	Colorado Springs School District 11
Grades	9 to 12
Enrollment	2013 students
Color(s)	brown and white
Mascot	eagle
Affiliation	Western Association of Schools and Colleges
Information	http://www.d11.org/palmer/ask_palmer.htm
Nickname	Terrors
Newspaper	The Lever
Yearbook	Retrospect
TV	Terror TV
Website	http://www.d11.org/palmer/

General William J. Palmer High School is a secondary school located in downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado. The school has a student population of approximately 2,000 students, and attracts enrollment from all over the city. The flagship high school of School District 11, Palmer has the oldest International Baccalaureate (IB) program in the area, founded in 1991.

History

Palmer High School is located at 301 North Nevada Avenue in Colorado Springs. The present building was built by the Works Progress Administration under Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940. Originally named Colorado Springs High School, Palmer High School was re-named in 1959 after the city's founder, General William Jackson Palmer. At that date, the city had expanded enough to warrant the building of a second high school, Roy J. Wasson High School.

The school traces its history back to the 1870s and still uses a "C" for varsity letters, which through 1986 was referred to as the Broken Circle Tribe. In 1894, the successful football team earned the nickname "holy terrors," and so the school adopted the nickname "Terrors." In 1923, the football team won the national championship, the same year that Fred Fink wrote the beloved "Terror Fight Song." Prior to 1945, the school's mascot was a pit bull.^{[citation needed]}

Eaglebeak

In 1945, a Native American student, Don Willis, designed Eaglebeak, a caricature of a fictitious Indian chieftain and the teams became the Terrors. In 1985 a local political hopeful criticized the mascot as racist, making Palmer one of the very first cases of controversy over a Native American mascot in the United States. Despite the fact that the politician, having lost the election, later publicly apologized to the student body and retracted the charge of racism, the damage was done and Eaglebeak was not to return. In the following years, Palmer experimented with a variety of mascots, to include a two-month flirtation with the Tasmanian devil from Warner Brothers, which nearly led to a lawsuit.

In the early 1990s the high school chose an eagle as its mascot, naming it "Eaglebeak", but without the historical background of the original.

School activities and programs

The Lever is Palmer's student run newspaper. It is run by students with a teacher serving as an advisor. The newspaper is published nearly every school month, and is free to all students and staff members. Recently, the newspaper digitized its previous issues, and can now be accessed online.

Terror TV is a student television program, about ten minutes long, featuring current students and teachers in skits, interviews, Palmer events and coverage.

Palmer's mock trial program won the Colorado state competition in 2009, and won the Southern Colorado Regional Competition in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. The team has been in the state championship final round three out of the last four years. Palmer will be sending two mock trial teams to state competition in March 2011. Link Text

Feeder patterns

Middle schools that feed into Palmer include

• Horace Mann Middle School
• North Middle School

CSHS-Palmer Alumni Association

The CSHS-Palmer Alumni Association, Inc., founded in 1984, has a very active membership in excess of 1000 members.^{[citation needed]} The association sponsors activities both at the school and in the community. Activities at the school included Homecoming, the Senior Brunch, the Night School dinner, the bell tower and clock maintenance program, school Beautification Day in the spring, the "Link Crew" program (where upperclassmen mentor incoming freshmen), and the "I Love to Read" program for elementary students. Several scholarship funds are supported as well, including the Ron Tuttle Memorial scholarship and the Bob Isaac Memorial scholarship.

The Alumni Association established the CSHS/Palmer High School Hall of Fame in 1985 with the inauguration of 14 inductees. Since that time, an average of three alumni have been inducted annually during Homecoming weekend to honor graduates who have gone on to attain prominence in variety of endeavors and have made outstanding contributions to society.

Notable alumni

Notable alumni of Palmer High School include:

• Robert M. Isaac (1945, as Colorado Springs High School), mayor of Colorado Springs^{[citation needed]}
• Cassandra Peterson (1969), who played Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
• Reginald McKnight (1974) novelist, short story writer, Hamilton Holmes Professor of English at the University of Georgia
• Robert L. Gordon III (1975, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Military Community and Family Policy)
• Chris Fowler (1980), host of ESPN College Gameday
• Lance Armstrong (graduated elsewhere), seven-time consecutive Tour de France winner, founder of the philanthropic Lance Armstrong Foundation
• Bryce Case (2000), rapper, former hacker, and internet entrepreneur^{[citation needed]}
• Reggie Jackson (basketball) (2008), NBA Basketball Player for the Oklahoma City Thunder^{[citation needed]}

External links and references

• official Palmer High School website
• history
• CSHS/Palmer Alumni Association
• Student's art battle winds up unifying, Mark Arnest, The Gazette (May 20, 2005)
• Class dismissed: Planned Parenthood ejected from District 11 schools, deYoanna, Michael, The Independent (February 24, 2005)