TEXARKANA, Ark. - What started with a chicken dinner in 1938 ended this year with a letter calling it quits.
For decades, alumni of the North Heights School gathered to reminisce and reforge the bonds they formed with each other in the small school they attended outside the city limits. But the relentless passage of time made 2019's North Heights Alumni Association banquet the last.
"We've lost so many, and that's the primary reason that we discontinued meeting this year," said Bobby Daniel, association president and historian of the school. Many of the association's core group are now in their 80s.
Last year was also the last time the association gave its award to an outstanding eighth-grader at the original school's namesake, North Heights Junior High. Earlier this month, Daniel closed the association's treasury account, and the group will use the money to donate a flagpole and plaque at the new Arkansas Middle School, slated to open in 2021.
Like many of the association's most active members, Daniel graduated in the 1950s. Alumni kept in touch through an annual newsletter, and many traveled back home to Texarkana for the reunion banquet each Good Friday, extending the friendships they formed in what by all accounts was a school that fostered closeness.
"I loved every minute of it. I made lifelong friends, and still very friendly with them to this day, and I like that," said Patsy Smith, one of the school's first cheerleaders. "I loved every minute of it. I made lifelong friends, and I'm still very friendly with them to this day, and I like that."
Alumnus Nedra Turney agreed.
"There was and is just a community feeling in some settings that are not there always, and the North Heights alumni group really is close, and that's from the older ones to the newer ones.
"What I think of is most of the families, I would say, had hardships, and no matter the status, the students were just one group. They just looked out for one another. There was just camaraderie there," Turney said.
"It was a school that was very tight knit. And I can't really tell you exactly why that was. Maybe it was just because it was a small school, but there was very much of a family feeling. And when we would get together on Good Friday each year, I tell you it was heartwarming just to watch and to hear what took place at that get together," Daniel said.
The first school on the site - at East 35th and Garland streets, then outside the city limits - was there before the end of the 19th century, according to historical notes compiled by Daniel. A brick school building first was built there in the early 1920s, and additions and renovations continued through the 1930s and 1940s. The school's small size and semi-rural setting helped bring students and teachers together, alumnus Eddie Shuffield said.
"North Heights was laid back. It was mainly just rural people.
"It was close knit. Everybody knew everybody. The teachers took a personal interest in you individually, and they would strive to help you any way they could," Shuffield said.
Turney and Smith echoed how personally involved the school's teachers were with their students.
"The teachers cared so much. They were going to see to it that if you weren't getting it, you got it," Turney said.
"Our school wasn't so large that my teacher couldn't look out through the room and call each person by name, and that made a difference to me. My parents really would like for me to have gone to a larger school, but I was so involved with all the people I said, 'No. No way I could do that,'" Smith said.
The reunion tradition dates to before World War Two.
"The first meeting was in 1938. Two of the girls went out and bought four fat hens, and they put on a feast for those who had graduated from North Heights School. And for the next 82 years we had a banquet. We didn't miss a single year having a banquet. And I think that's a record that probably can't be broken by very many schools," Daniel said.
But time and age eventually made the annual get together unsustainable.
"Our attendance was down rather sharply last year, and I knew that this year it was going to be down even more so. And I just hated for us to go out on a sour note. I hated for us to have a banquet when there was so few people there that it was embarrassing. It was a hard decision," Daniel said.
Alumnus Jo Tuck said the group knew it was time to bring the reunion to an end.
"Sometimes you just have to know that it was one of those God things. We had talked about it in the past. The day was coming. But nobody wanted to turn loose and set a date and that sort of thing. The group that was working in it was probably 50% of the people that were coming.
"So many of the older group that was like from 70, 75 up weren't able to travel, or they had passed away, or they had married and their spouse was in bad health, things like that," she said.
Daniel made the call, sending a letter to alumni to inform them the reunion would be discontinued. Though many plan to stay in touch as best they can, it will not be the same without the annual gathering. Some expressed concern about what the community is losing.
"Time takes care of a lot of that, and this younger generation, they don't have time for that. They don't get into that, get those reunions going. Used to be, they'd look forward to that and work on it just like North Heights did," Shuffield said.
"The school was an important part of this community. It certainly influenced and touched the lives of many, many people who lived out here. We had men and women who served the community and served their state and served the country," Daniel said.
Tuck said the reunion is irreplaceable.
"We're going to miss it. I already miss it. I just miss the contact with the people. You know, some of them you know a long time," she said. "We were family. We were the North Heights family."