The Unchanging Face of Milby

For more than 70 years, Milby High School has educated working class kids from the East End. In the early 1960s, I was one of them. I recently went back to Milby to see not what had changed, but what, if anything, remained.

Comments (0) By Michael Berryhill Thursday, Oct 9 1997

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There are those who argue that Hispanic kids need an education that reflects more of their Hispanic culture. Milby probably needs more teachers who are fluent in Spanish. And I don't know if it's going to be any easier teaching One Hundred Years of Solitude than Macbeth. But I do know that a student can get an education at Milby if he or she wants it.

Something is still alive and vibrant in this rambling old campus, whose growth is marked and measured in its architecture. Milby has changed, it is going to change more, and I want it to change. There is something shimmering and shining there, but it's not under the newel post. It's in the eyes of those teachers who have persisted through all the changes, devoted to students for decades.

The opening of the school song goes "Milby, Fair Milby, your sun shall ever rise ..." Some of the students might not get it yet, but they will. Some things, like the way a teacher insists on the best from a student, last forever. That's the past that is never past.