Members of the Class of 1945 who attended the 65th reunion were Evelyn Hollis Hedgepath, Irma Price Raines, Elfrida J. McNinch, Betty S. Hendrix, Ted Calcina Jr., Miriam Clamp Fuson, Jim Fetner, Christine White, Margaret H. Taylor, Fae H. Williams, Mary Anne Williams Morrison, Bill Hollerung, Oida Faye D. Page, Clara Goldson Hulon, Martha Hammond, Frances M. Fagan, Joe Areheart, Bill Hair, Phriness Cox, Bill Dawson, Ruth Ott, and Pat Sease Senn. Sixty–five years after graduation, a couple of Columbia “girls” are still accepting awards from their alma mater, Columbia High School. No matter that the school building they attended no longer stands. Columbia High lives in the hearts of its graduates, and the Class of 1945 had a party last week to celebrate their friendships.

Special awards went to Irma Price Raines, and Evelyn Hollis Hedgepath, for their persistence and diligence in making the 65th class reunion a success. The reunion was held at Lexington Country Club on April 24, featuring a luncheon and social time together with many photographs of the graduates and their guests.

Ted Calcina Jr. did the honors as emcee, assisted by Evelyn Hedgepath, chairman of the event. The old friends reminisced about their school days and counted up the children and grandchildren and great–grands acquired since.

One enterprising graduate almost drowned when he drove his car into the Saluda River a few years ago. Another has been divorced for 40 years and still lives next door to his ex–wife, “not a good arrangement,” he concedes. One raised some eyebrows when he reported that he and his wife have 17 children. That statement was corrected that the total of all offspring of three generations comes to 17. He had simply lost count.

The school building which housed these scholars was completed in 1916 on the corner of Washington

and Marion streets in Columbia. Its Italian Renaissance architecture inspired a series of copycats around the state with similar school buildings designed by the same firm, Urquhart and Johnson. Total construction cost, including utilities: $125,000.

The school held its last classes at that location in1975, after which staff and student body were transferred to a new campus at 1701 Westchester Drive in the St. Andrews section of Columbia. The following decade saw a prolonged and public battle between preservationists and demolitionists, culminating with D–Day, January 30, 1984, when bulldozers attacked the deteriorating building to make way for new construction of the First Baptist Church complex.