Alumni

Welcome Alumni

Highland has always been a welcoming and warm community, but one area that has been lacking in recent years is alumni relations.  We hope this site will allow alumni to reconnect with Highland and remain a part of the Hive!  Please feel free to contact us with reunion or event information and we will post it here.

In 2011, Highland began a Letterman's Breakfast.  This event was open to all Lettermen and Letterwomen.  A catered breakfast was followed by a short presentation from the school.  Alumni were provided tickets to the football game that afternoon.  This will be an annual event.  We have also hosted "affinity events" for alumni with special connections to individual sports and activities.  There have been alumni games, alumni swims, and alumni events.  You will find these events posted here, so please check back occasionally so you can know when these will occur.

Highland High School Alumni Site

Ring the Bell Athletics Newsletter

Just Text HighlandHS to 22828 to receive our email newsletter!

 

The HHS Alumni Association is now accepting nominations for the 2024 Sports Hall of Fame!

• Nomination forms are available online on the HIGHLAND HIGH SCHOOL athletic webpage
• Nominations will be accepted for: An Athlete, A Coach or Athletic Team
• Nomination form is good for 3 years, after that a new form would need to be resubmitted.
• Notification to new Hall of Fame members will take place by June 30, 2024
• An event will be scheduled to honor inductees being honored at a special ceremony.

Highland High School's 2024 Sports Hall of Fame Nomination Form

News

In the Shadow of the Highlands, by Wayne Hawley , class of 62

Four score and 7 percent of my life, I have lived under the shadow of the Highlands. As a young child in flat Flint and Detroit, I was unaware of any highland although a city surrounded by Detroit was called Highland Park which at that time was headquarters for Chrysler Motors. My Dad worked for Fords.

When we moved however to the hills and mountains of Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1955, I became aware of the Highland. If I remained there it was preordained that in 1959 to 1962 I would go to Highland High School. The school was situated near a suburb called “Knob Hill” what was then the outskirts before the desert stretched miles to the Sandia Mountains.

There was only Albuquerque High in the valley when Highland was built in 1949 to accommodate the booming growth of new employees for the new military bases and atomic research laboratories. Soon the spacious new school would become so small that a new high school— some with half day classes— had to be built every year. (There are now 13 public high schools in Albuquerque and the Albuquerque High Bulldogs became the Hornets chief and eternal rival) These newcomers built homes on the aforementioned desert all the way to the Sandia foothills. Highland itself accommodated the growth by adding military barracks out back as extra classrooms, which were cold in the winter.

Many of the parents of the students were engineers with their masters and doctorates, so science and math and academic competition were highly emphasized. It was a yuppie school before that name was invented. There were about five hundred in my graduating class. The only way you could get known or recognized would be to be in a clique or club, like football, band, drama. I excelled in orchestra with my violin. When I graduated, I was so unpopular, that I went around with my annual for autographs from school janitors!

Highland was known for its sports, mostly football and basketball. For inter-school games, no school used their own field, but went downtown to the big Milne Stadium. By my Junior year I was allowed to drive our car by myself to these games. What a treat. A movie company filmed our team and the whole student body for a football training film. Part of our players wore our traditional blue and gold uniforms and the movie company supplied the other half with red and white uniforms which we called the peppermint team.

I still sing out the Highland Fight Song:

• Highland High we’re loyal to you, faithful through all the years,
• When the blue and gold is unfurled, we will rise and proudly cheer, Rah Rah Rah.
• Bold and Fearless we will remain, adding laurels to your name, Take
• it as a tip and win the championship, Go you hornets win this game,
• To the left, to the right, fight Hornets fight, Hit them high, hit
• them low, Go hornets go. Repeat the verse down to Rah, Rah,

(During Highland’s first school year 1949-50 the students voted in their homerooms to choose the name “Hornet”’ as their school mascot.  The inspiration for this choice was the U.S. Aircraft carrier, “Hornet,” Invented in April 1942; it was used for the surprise raid on Tokyo Japan.).

My next encounter with Highland was when I met Pam in 1968, was drafted and sent to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio for training. On one of my free times I went to the base theater to see the musical Brigadoon. The opening number went “Once in the Highlands, the highlands of Scotland, deep in the night on a murky brae. There in the Highlands, the Highlands of Scotland two weary hunters lost their way. And this is what happened, the strange thing that happened..’ I was so thrilled with the love songs I sent them home to my fiancé, Pam like “Come to Me, Bend to Me” or” Almost Like Being in Love.”

Years later we moved back to Michigan and I was a pastor in charge of the conference handicap committee and we would have handicap concerts at a church called Highland United Methodist. Then when we moved to Texas we were recruited by Bill Edwards of Horseshoe Bay, a former Michigander to build Casitas in Rio Bravo Mexico. He had also recruited a team of volunteers from that same Highland U.M.C. And for the last eight or nine years, we’ve looked forward to see and hear them each year. I say hear, it is great to hear again the MICHIGAN accent, how English should be pronounced.

In 2010 I rediscovered Brigadoon, by performing in the orchestra at the Hill Country Community Theater musicale.

Just as Brigadoon was revisited, so was Highland High. This July we took our whole family: three sons and wives and 4 grandchild back to New Mexico for our 50th Wedding Anniversary. We were standing outside the Highland gymnasium when John Barnhill the Athletics Director, invited us inside for a tour. He showed us the polished floors of the basketball court, the numerous trophy cases, and he gave me a free Highland T-shirt which was the highlight of my day.

Now the Highland Lakes of Texas beckon and surround me. In the “Highland Lakes” phone book for this area there are thirty-six businesses with the words Highland Lakes in their titles, and nine with Highland in their titles, and two with Highlander. I have eaten delicious food at the Highlander restaurant and I have danced in a talent show with Lew Cohn editor of The Highlander Newspaper. Not listed were two of my most cherished: The Highland Lakes Weekly, edited by John Hallowell, who had two pictures of me this last week where he actually performed with us in the talent show. And the most important The Highland Lakes Writers’ Club, of which I am the president and which meets 6:30 P.M. on the 3rd Wednesday at the Marble Falls Library.

Thank the Lord, he has always provided me a Highland.

 

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LordPsalm 121:1-2