On Sunday while I was snapping some shots of the ongoing demolition of the old Lorain High School, the guy who was wrangling a big brick-and-mortar souvenir chunk into his trunk stopped to talk to me.
"I graduated from here in 1970," he stated rather glumly. I could see the demolition really bothered him. "I live in Elyria now," he went on. "If this school was in Elyria, we would have saved it."
I think he's right.
Some communities value their heritage and try to hold on to the things that define them. Unfortunately, Lorain isn't one of them. I've written several letters to the Editor over the past decade to lament the fact that so many schools were being abandoned or slated for demolition that really weren't all that old. And the sterile, ugly 3-story boxes that replace them have none of the character of the old buildings.
The same thing that happened to LHS will eventually happen to Admiral King (my Alma Mater.) And I'm willing to bet the new school will not be called Admiral King either.