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DHS keeping its promise for 100 years

Above the entrance of the old high school building at East Second Avenue and 12th Street is inscribed the year, “1916.” That date signals the first Durango High School graduating class. This year, 2016 marks both the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century of educational excellence for Durango and its public schools.

Let me give you just two examples of how 9-R grads drastically changed Durango. When I was a boy growing up in Durango, it had slums – ugly, disease-ridden places where Durangoans lived and raised their children. Santa Rita stood just across the Animas from the southern residential neighborhoods of our town. The other shanty was at the south end of West Second Avenue where a skate park now stands.

Thanks, in great part, to Durango High School graduates, these no longer stand. No slums have existed in Durango for decades.

Another example? Look due south down Main Street. You will see a mountain just on the other side of the Animas River. The face of that mountain is covered with grass. Maybe you can see the faint remains of a large D. At one time, again, when I was a boy in Durango, that mountain was home to the Vanadium Corporation of America. The face of the mountain then was covered in dark grey almost black dust, and when the wind blew, the dust blew and blew.

After some years, vanadium was discovered to be unhealthy. The tons of dust were hauled off, the mine shut down, grass planted, the place declared healthy, and who did the lion’s share in solving that? Yes, you know who.

So here is my salute to you 9-R for keeping its promise to me – that after all these decades, I still delight in reading and writing; that my mind is still curious; that I remember, with but one exception in 12 years (no kindergarten back then), that I never felt unwelcome by any district employee.

David Watkins, DHS, class of 1966

Weatherby Lake, Mo.



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