THE GRADUATE (SCHOOL) MUSEUM.

Damages from hurricane Ike were:

The door and the windows have been boarded over. The bricks on the
sidewalk were uplifted by hurricane Ike however they were brought 
inside the building for safety. The plumbing was stolen from the 
restroom, copper piping for the air conditioning was stolen, and 
roofing was also stolen besides other damages. Ihave not had any
updates this year as to if they repaired, sold the building and
moved or what. It was too costly to repair the last I heard.
very costly.

Now for the history and information about the Graduate Museum
other wise known to some as the School Museu.

The Port Arthur, Texas Graduate Museum, also known as the School 
Museum and Reunion Hall was a dream of Donna Worthington, graduate 
of Thomas Jefferson High School class of 1956. The museum is home 
to memorabilia for FIVE schools from the Port Arthur area: 
Thomas Jefferson, Bishop Byrne, Stephen F. Austin, Sacred Heart, 
and Abraham Lincoln. All five schools are part of history now. 

Click here for the complete newspaper article "Classes Past."

"When the enrollment of PAISD begin to drop and consolidation of the 
high schools was evident, she began to organize and plan the birth 
of the Port Arthur High School Graduate Museum, including the current 
high schools, as well as, the high schools that had already closed. 
She wanted to preserve the memorabilia, traditions and spirit of all 
the high schools of Port Arthur. She was named the curator of the 
museum at that time."

Excerpt taken from a memoriam article for Donna Worthington published 
October 11, 2006 by Sue Baker in the Port Arthur News. Click here 
for the complete article in pdf format.  


Alumni met on April 4, 2002 to discuss the steps necessary to 
acquire the old Walgreen's building at 535 Proctor Street downtown 
Port Arthur. By June 28, 2002 an article hit the Beaumont Enterprise 
and plans began for a fund raiser to make this dream come true. By 
July 2002 enough funds were raised. And on Thursday, July 11, 2002 
the keys to the old Walgreen building in downtown were symbolically 
handed over to a group working to transform the space into a museum 
honoring the city's former high schools. 

On Saturday, October 4, 2003, about 300 people gathered for a first 
time ever home coming celebrated by five schools on common ground and 
the Graduate Museum opened its doors. The festivities were followed 
by a dance that night.


"Memories are beautiful," said Donna Worthington, a 1956 graduate of 
Thomas Jefferson and organizer of Reunion Hall, which serves as a 
museum for all the former high schools. "This is where you take your 
kids and grandkids." 

Carolyn Worthington, a 1960 graduate of Stephen F. Austin and Donna 
Worthington's sister-in-law, said she hoped to see about half of the 
72 people from her class at the gathering. "The schools are gone now. 
This is to keep it in everyone's memory," she said. 

Excerpt taken from the article in the Beaumont Enterprise. Click here 
for the complete newspaper article "Alma maters still matter to grads of 
by gone schools"


Much labor went into renovating the old Walgreen's building once the 
sale was finalized. The interior was partitioned into rooms painted 
in the colors of the former high schools. The rooms are filled with 
memorabilia from those schools, including uniforms, yearbooks, trophies 
and representations of the mascots. There is actually a three-foot tall
metal bumblebee that once stood in the hallway of Lincoln High.

The Graduate Museum has been used for class reunions and reunion socials. 
The museum is also a place to take a walk down memory lane and recall 
the good times and perhaps some of the bad times, a favorite teacher, 
or maybe even one we didn’t like so much, football games, parades, pep 
rallies, the band, the corps, going steady, letter jackets, gym class, 
1940 Buick, 1957 Chevy, 45 rpm records, guys not returning phone calls 
when they said they would or gals giving wrong telephone numbers, poodle 
skirts, pony tails, or hey when a football game was won by a long run 
distance run at the last few minutes of the game. 


Newspaper articles, classmates photos from different school years, 
photos from after graduation, all sorts of memorabilia that are 
representative of our school years and successes are on display. These
items have been donated either by classmates or by their families.  

The Graduate Museum is a place to recall those good ol' days when life 
didn't seem so hectic, when you didn't have to walk through a metal 
detector to get into the school building and the worst thing we got 
caught for was chewing gum in study hall or rolling toilet paper down 
from one end of the room to the next in class just before the bell rang. 
It’s a place to share your memories with your family, your friends and 
talk about what you did way back when. Or perhaps your children and 
grand children can visit and say, “Hey look at the odd hairdos they 
had when grandpa and grandma were teenagers!” 

Please note that some students from some of these schools are listed 
in the Museum of the Gulf Coast and will be listed in this site as such. 
Port Arthur has produced a lot of talent. That speaks highly of the 
teachers we had during our hay day.


The year 2002 ended an era for three mascots. The Yellow Jacket's and 
the Bumble Bee’s stingers were put to rest. Stephen F. Austin's Eagle 
lost its feathers. Memorial High School emerged in August 2002 and a 
new mascot was born. Bishop Byrne High School closed its doors in 1983 
due to low enrollment and the Shamrock wilted. Sacred Heart High School
had already merged with Bishop Byrne in 1966. What price progress? 

For those who live out of town, you may not be able to come back home 
and walk the halls of the schools we once did but at least we can relive
our memories by TAKING A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE IN OUR GRADUATE MUSEUM.

We are in need of empathy and sympathy to restore and save our class 
museum, OUR GRADUATE MUSEUM. Some people have called this Reunion Hall. 
Some have called it the Class Museum. 

But the weather, storms, hurricanes and vandalism may try to destroy 
our building but MOTHER NATURE WILL NEVER DESTROY OUR MEMORIES.
 
Memories are very dear and precious.
The museum is like a living time capsule.
Click on the picture to see a larger image of the museum.
Below is a picture of the museum pre Hurricane Ike





Copyright © 2008

Carolyn Bigler Hebert 
aka Moonlightflower

Donna W

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Copyright © 2008 Carolyn Bigler Hebert
aka Moonlightflower
All artwork was either created by or edited
by Carolyn.


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