DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker's the source — here's how I tell it. Now settle in, because this one's got a school, a street that changed its name, and a marching band that crossed an international border and came back with hardware. G.
W. Carver High School was built to provide an educational facility for African Americans in the La Vega School District. They named it in honor of George Washington Carver — scientist, botanist, educator, inventor — a man whose reputation needed no introduction then and needs none now.
On September 5, 1956, those doors swung open at 1601 Dripping Springs Road. The school's first and only principal was J. J.
Flewellen, and in time the community honored him the way communities do when someone really earns it — that street, Dripping Springs Road, was later renamed after the man himself. Some 500 African American children, grades one through twelve, walked through those doors. Five hundred young people under one roof, from the littlest first-graders on up to seniors nearly grown.
In 1963, grades one through five moved to a new building — Dripping Springs Elementary, just down the road at 2401 Dripping Springs Road — and the upper grades stayed put at the original location. Now, the students at Carver excelled at a good many things, but there is one chapter of this story that deserves its own moment of quiet before we tell it right. The school had a marching band.
An award-winning marching band. And in 1967, under the direction of a man named Mr. Robert E.
Lee, that band traveled to Montreal, Canada to take part in the world's fair — Expo '67. Let that sink in. A band of high school kids from east Waco, Texas, rolled into Montreal with their instruments and their nerve, and when it was all over, they walked away with the marching band grand prize of one thousand dollars — and not one trophy, but two — one for best high school band, and one for champion American high school band.
One thousand dollars and two trophies. Brought home to 1601 Dripping Springs Road. Then came 1970.
The federal courts ordered school integration, and Carver was closed. The building sat, not abandoned exactly, but changed — when the Waco Independent School District acquired it after taking in east Waco, WISD offered the space to the non-profit operations of the Blue Triangle YMCA and the Inner City Ministries' Meals On Wheels program. Community work carried on inside those walls.
In 1980, WISD reacquired the building as a special education facility. Then in 1984, the old Carver High became the Carver Sixth Grade Center. In the fall of 1993, it was renamed Carver Academy — a magnet school for science and technology, which feels just right given whose name it carried all along.
And in 2012, G. W. Carver became a neighborhood school once more.
The building changed purposes more times than most people change addresses, but it never stopped being Carver — and somewhere in the story of those two trophies sitting in a luggage hold headed back from Montreal, you understand exactly why.
What the marker says
G.W. Carver High School was built to provide an educational facility for African Americans in the La Vega School District. The school was named in honor of George Washington Carver, a well-known African American scientist, botanist, educator and inventor. The doors of the school opened on September 5, 1956 at 1601 Dripping Springs Road, a street later renamed after the school's first and only principal, J.J. Flewellen. Some 500 African American children in grades one through twelve were enrolled in the school. In 1963, grades one through five were moved to a new school, Dripping Springs Elementary at 2401 Dripping Springs Road, and the remaining grades stayed at the original location. The students excelled in numerous events including an award-winning marching band. In 1967, the band, under the direction of Mr. Robert E. Lee, traveled to Montreal, Canada to take part in the world's fair, known as expo "67. They took home the marching band grand prize of $1,000 and two trophies for "best high school band" and "champion American high school band." Carver was closed in 1970 after the federal courts ordered school integration and remained closed until the Waco Independent School District (WISD), who acquired the building when it took in east Waco, offered the building as a community space to the non-profit operations of the blue triangle YMCA and the Inner City Ministries" Meals On Wheels program. WISD reacquired the building in 1980 as a special education facility and, in 1984, the old Carver High became the Carver Sixth Grade Center. In the fall of 1993, the school was renamed Carver Academy, a magnet school for science and technology. In 2012, G. W. Carver became a neighborhood school.