PRINTThrough the Years
Impress alums with your historical knowledge about the Bruins and the Kewpies.
Courtesy of Missourian
Student body officers pose outside Hickman High School in 1964.
September 24, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
1925: Columbians want educational expansion, and they want it fast. The country property of the David H. Hickman estate is chosen to be the location of the new high school.
March 26, 1987: President Reagan celebrates the Kewpies’ achievements.
The 1956 renovations to Hickman included a swimming pool, classrooms and labs.
Members of the class of ’91 become graduates in the Rock Bridge gym. Cememonies were ...
A Bruin player rocks the field in the 1975 championship. The team had a 12-0 ...
- Scenes from the Providence Bowl
- Fast times at Hickman High
- Tech-savvy students
- The young and the reckless
- Rumors and realities
- Overcoming obstacles
- The spread
- The Education of Segregation
- Lifelong leaders
- Edged out
- Roosters, cows and mice, oh my!
- Crosstown competition
- Playing the field
- Say what?
- Where are they now?
- On the Job: High School Custodians
- After-school alliance
- Rival Survival
- High school mascots go head to head
1930s: Who knew naked babies could march so well? In 1938, the school’s first marching band is formed, but these Kewpies covered up. The wrestling team wins three state championships.
1950s: New additions in 1956 double Hickman’s classroom space. With a swimming pool as one of the new features, students can relive their summer swimming soirees year-round.
1960-1961: During this school year, after Douglass ends its program, 113 African American students call themselves Kewpies, up from 20 students the year before. In 1969, student Tony Edwards is elected the first black vice president of the student body.
1970s: In 1973, the first female student government president starts laying down the law. Rock Bridge opens in September, and 583 students in grades 10 through 12 walk the halls. In the mid-’70s, Hickman gives girls a chance to show off their sports skills by introducing women’s athletic teams.
1975-1976: The 1975 Bruin football team wins the state championship. That winter, the boys basketball team is the cream of the court and takes the regional title. These boys are pretty baller.
1985-1986: Students will do just about anything to get out of school (swine flu, anyone?), and this year is no exception. Rock Bridge seniors throw classroom blackboard erasers over power lines as an end-of-the-year prank. To any alumni smirking right now, just wait, Dr. Walker will find you!
1987: President Ronald Reagan visits Hickman in March to congratulate the school on being one of the best in the country. He even gets a free Kewpie sweatshirt out of it.
1994-1995: MU football star-in-training Corby Jones leads Hickman to a nail-biting 43-42 win over Rock Bridge. KOMU-TV dubs the event the “Game of the Century,” and more than 9,000 fans show up. It’ll take us more than 100 years to forget this one.
Rock Bridge sees a few changes when day-to-day classes move to an alternating block schedule. And from now on, seniors don their caps and gowns at MU’s Hearnes Center instead of the school gym.
2000-2001: Major construction, including a new-media center, science classrooms, music rooms and a foreign language lab, doubles the space of Rock Bridge. The downside? Twice as many ways for newbie freshmen to get lost.
2004: Scandal rocks Rock Bridge in July when Principal Bruce Brotzman is issued a trespass warning by MUPD. He is banned from all MU libraries after a complaint of inappropriate sexual conduct in Ellis Library. Brotzman leaves Columbia in 2005.
2008: Rock Bridge students, alumni and community members raise $14,500 during the YouthAIDS Walk. Walking a combined total of 900 miles helped benefit the global HIV/AIDS education and prevention program.
In October, Hickman makes national news when a cell-phone video shows Hickman Resource Officer Mark Brotemarkle involved in a fight with students. The video puts him under investigation.
2009: Eighteen Hickman students are recognized as National Merit finalists, beating out St. Louis University High School for the largest number of finalists in the state. Go Kewpies!
In June, Newsweek ranks Rock Bridge No. 1,201 out of 1,500 schools in their top high school edition. Even though the score was 26 ranks lower than in 2008, CoMo is proud.
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