A New School Building
The class of ’41 began their journey when a new school building was first opened in 1937; a consolidation of students from Red Bank Elementary, Mountain Creek Elementary, Pineville Grammar, and Northside Junior High.
Among the hundreds of photo negatives recently digitized were scenes from the early days of Red Bank High School. A trip to the public library revealed a remarkable discovery. I was looking at original negatives from 1941 — the school’s first yearbook and first graduating class of seniors.
The confident energy of youth is seen in the faces of young men and women at the new school building on Dayton Blvd.
Fifty-four seniors graduated as the US entered World War II. In the coming months all 19 men in that class would be serving in the armed forces.
The class of ’41 began their journey when a new school building was first opened in 1937; a consolidation of students from Red Bank Elementary, Mountain Creek Elementary, Pineville Grammar, and Northside Junior High.
Hamilton County undertook its largest public schools expansion in the mid-1930s, financed through a combination of county bonds and federal Public Works Administration (PWA) grants.
Red Bank was one of seven new schools built between 1936 and 1937 with additions made to four others.
As part of the New Deal, between 1933 and 1939, the PWA funded the construction of nearly 13,000 new schools nationwide—approximately 70% of all new school buildings in the U.S.
In 1941, he was principal at Red Bank. Rankin served as Superintendent of Hamilton County Schools for over ten years and was an advocate for funding expansions at Red Bank’s school, and others.
For generations to follow, the stadium behind the school was known as Rankin Field.
As we end our long journey through high school, let us think of it as only the beginning of our future.
I would be part of the last class of seniors to graduate from the very same building in 1982. Afterwards, the high school swapped places with the middle school on Morrison Springs Rd.
In 2013 a new middle school building was completed and the original high school building was demolished. A 12-acre grass lot is all that remains today.
