Knott County High School Class of 1968 Fiftieth Reunion

On Saturday, October 13, 2018, I attended a small, but nice fiftieth reunion get together for my high school graduating class of 1968 from Knott County High School in Pippa Passes, Kentucky.  I was responsible for putting the event together during Appalachia Day at Alice Lloyd College which is located adjoining the site where our high school used to be.  Many of that graduating class had also attended ALC and/or Upward Bound on the ALC campus.  ALC Alumni Association Director Teresa Grender worked with us gladly, professionally, and productively.  ALC provided lunch for all of us which was appreciated.  The turnout for this event was dismally low and I am certain that part of the reason for that is that I did not manage to personally contact each person in the class.  But that would have been unrealistic for me in the best of times.  Only four former students, including myself showed up.  We were Sandra Kaye Hall Huff, Larry Huff, Kenneth Sparkman, and me.  My cousin Charlotte Hicks Caudill who writes part time for the Troublesome Creek Times also showed up with her husband and took photos for the paper which had graciously run an announcement about the event each week for a month. Our former teacher, Mary Lois Jacobs, was also on the grounds of ALC volunteering for Caney Baptist Church and we were able to speak with her but she was unable to get away from her duties to join us.  She did bring a bag of prints of the photo above of the old school, a few photos of a painting her daughter had done based on the photo, and a list of the information she had about the alumni.  I had also been in contact with Jean Francis, whom we believe to be the only other living teacher from that period, but she was unable to attend due to the ongoing health problems of her only son.  We met in Hunger Den, the college dining hall for a couple of hours and shared stories, tried to remember every member of the class since none of us had a yearbook, and also tried to remember just how many of the class have died since graduation.  That is an inordinately high number somewhere near twenty.  If you are reading this and are an alumnus of Knott County High School, please get in contact with me and pass on information about who and what you know from that time.

Roger D. Hicks, Larry Huff, Sandra Kaye Hall Huff, Kenneth Sparkman Photo by Charlotte Hicks Caudill

We talked about how successful that 1968 class from KCHS had been despite having had nearly a fifty percent dropout rate.  We had entered high school as the largest freshman class in KCHS history with more than one hundred students and graduated with only fifty-eight.  But nearly a dozen of those fifty-eight received graduate degrees in our lifetimes and quite a few worked as teachers, mental health professionals, and other human services positions.  We had a wonderful get together, caught up on old times, and discussed the possibility of trying to have another get together at Sandra Kaye's house in the spring of 2019.  Stay in touch if you are a KCHS alumnus and let us know where you are and provide up to date contact information. 

KCHS Painting by Daughter of Mary Lois & Burnis Jacobs