25th Annual All-Class Reunion and Golf Outing

Many thanks to Pat Peeters for starting this event and keeping it going for 25 years.  He was going to wrap it up after this year, but another intrepid Squire has offered to keep it going beyond this year!

2017 Tour of the Pennings Building & Grounds

Brett Dockry, class of '67, shared these photos on facebook from visit and tour he took of the grounds during his 50th reunion weekend in 2017.  The consensus of the comments on facebook was how similar things still look and that it brought back a lot of (mostly good) memories!

Here is the Reid Street elevation facing St. Norbert College.  This is where a lot of us went in first thing in the morning, although I remember buses dropping us off on Third Street and entering from the North (river) side sometimes.  The exterior of the building has not changed a lot.

This is still the South elevation, but toward the back of the building.  The middle row of windows would be the auditorium.  The top row would have been the balcony, but they had it closed off and turned it into a computer lab  (TRS-80s.)  The bottom row would have been to the balcony of the gym, which was a storage area in the 80s.  Mr. Bauknecht's senior English classroom at the upper right.

This is the North elevation facing the river.  I think I remember all the classrooms from the 80s.  Mr. Pigeon's junior English at the upper left.  Doc Coyle's History at the upper right.  Father La's math classroom at the lower right.  And was that Sister Janet's freshman algebra at the lower left?  I think so.

This is a nice shot of the front of the building through the trees.  A '70s graduate mentioned that at least two of the trees that are still there were planted to remember a student who was killed in an accident.  

Here's a nice shot of the front of the school.  I had just been doing some research on yearbooks and was pretty sure I had just seen a similar shot in one of the 1960s books.

Sure enough, I found it.  The 1967 Argos Editors used this shot in the front inside cover of the 1967 yearbook.  The windows are updated and the trees are a little different, but it is strikingly similar over a 50 year interval.  The cool thing is Brett Dockry was Co-editor of the 1967 yearbook.  I wonder if he remembered this shot when he framed the 2017 one?

On to the inside of the building.  It took me a minute to place this, but I think we are in the basement level looking South.  If so, my locker is one of those on the right.  Cool that it is still there!  The stairs on the left lead down to the gym and up to the main floor.  Dixie Davidson's art room was behind the lockers on the right.  And the cafeteria was at the far end on the right as well.

Let's check out the gym while we are down here.  This is looking East.  There is another post with some APHS Gym History, but you can see all of those features are still here.  Those wood panels above the backboard were pressbox or more spectator area.  Our weight room was behind the doors at floor level.

This is looking the other way, back towards the school.

Now Brett is upstairs shooting toward the back wall.  Notice the Squire Football Player and the Fighting Squire in the balcony to the left.  There use to be a wall there, and that was the football team's locker room.  Nice to see the wall art survived!

One more shot from the balcony looking back toward the school.

The last shot from downstairs is the cafeteria.  It has been remodeled and looks nothing like it did in the Pennings days.  But this is the space where groups of 75 Squires would come in to eat lunch and have a rollicking break in a busy school day.  It was usually pretty loud!

Now we are into the hallway on the main floor of Pennings.  Trophy cases built above and between the lockers.  The stairs to the auditorium are to the photographer's right.  Up and to the left are the stairs down to the rarely used main entrance, and the office just past those steps.  

Same hallway, with a better view of the trophy case.  I wish I had some pictures of those when they were full.  Except for the banners on the ceiling, this space has not changed much at all.

Here are the stairs down from the main hallway to the front entrance.  This was never used for anything when I was there.  It looks like they have made a little sitting area there now, but I remember it always being empty.

As long as we're here, let's check out the auditorium.  Here is the view from the stage.  The balcony was where Mr. Bauknecht (Director) and the lighting crew would be working the play.  Both of the sides used to be balconies too, but they were blocked off and used for other purposes.

The balcony on the South side was used for a very long and skinny computer lab where we learned to program in BASIC on a handful of TRS-80s, saving our work on to cassette tape.  If you were unable to retrieve your program from the tape (which happened quite a lot) Mr. Bauknecht would say your program was in the bitty bucket, and you'd have to start over.

Looking down from the back of the auditorium, that stage looks impossibly tiny.  Nat Zettel '83 tells me it was tinier until they extended it almost to the first row between Oklahoma '82 and Fiddler on the Roof '83.  That crowded the pit band into the lower right.  Father Peter (Ed) Funk said that when he played Jesus in Godspell, he had to get from the stage (when he died) to the back of the theater (when he rose) by running down through the gym and back up!

Finally we make our way up to the second floor.  If I have my bearings right, we are looking South. The stairs to the other closed off balcony, which had been turned into the teachers lounge, were to the left.  The Chapel (I was trying to remember what was above the main entrance, but it was the Chapel I think) is to the right.  Way at the end of the hall up some stairs was an office.  Mr. O's Disciplinarian office in my time.

Here is what was the chapel in the middle of the top floor facing Third Street.  It seems to have been turned into a little office now, but it still has the false wall with the stained glass.  I always thought it was sort of clever that they kept the outside looking like a school, but got that church feel inside.

If I remember correctly, the Library was between the Chapel and Doc Coyle's room also facing Third Street.  Mrs. Phelan was the Librarian in the 80s, she had a wry wit and was kind to us as she oversaw the books and the studying.

It looks like it has become an ROTC space now for meetings and books.  I like the old wood floors they brought back.  I remember an old, crappy, green carpet was in there back in the day.  Odd that I can picture that.

This was Mr. Tessner's Chemistry classroom in the Southwest corner when I was there, but Brett said that it was Father Frenzl's Detention Room back in the 60s.  By the 80s, Detention had moved to Mr. Oettinger's Biology classroom next door.

It's funny that it's pretty much still laid out like a Chem classroom, but the sinks and the Bunsen Burners are long gone.  Still has the chalkboard, but the Periodic Table of the Elements is no longer above it.  Did Father Frenzl teach Chemistry before Mr. Tessner arrived?

Finally we move to the grounds outside.  You can argue more has changed outside than in.  The Nicolet Paper building is still there, but it was sold to International Paper and then some Finnish Company.

And there's a brand new bridge crossing the river.  The West side is near where it always was, maybe a little closer to the school, but the East end is a block South of where it used to be.  It still weirds me out to see the dams on the North side of the Bridge instead of the SNC side.

Turning around, we see the North Elevation that faces the river.  More parking back here now, but I think it was all grass for outdoor gym class back in the day.  There was a chain link fence to keep balls out of the river, but it is gone now as we can see from the bridge picture.

Walking to the back of the building, Brett is standing about where the Band Hall was.  We had a student parking lot here too, but it was gravel.  No blacktop or lines for us, just squeeze your car in there and get to class!

And finally back to the the front and the main entrance.  Brett said it was used for guests in his day, but by the 80s I don't think we were using these doors at all.  It has the reliefs of the students holding books just like the other entrance.  That's a cool, unique, little feature of the building.

Thank you Brett Dockry for sharing these photos with all of the Squires.  You can find Brett's original post from March 2021 on the Abbot Pennings High School facebook site with some more stories about the pictures.

Mysteries Solved - Black Helmets and Yellow Pants

Since I started working on this collection in 2009, there were a couple questions that came up.  My friend Michele was kind enought to ask her dad, Dave Minten, our Athletic Director, Gym Teacher and Coach of many sports.  And he was able to share some answers.

As far as the helmet, I had gotten some photos from the 60s showing the Squires in a light, probably silver football helmet.  From the 1971 year book, I can see the 1970 season had the familiar black helmet with the Fighting Squire logo.  But the 1968 yearbook shows the '67 Squires in silver helmets.  So we have an approximate timeframe.  But why did we switch?

Michele told me that Dave remembers that,

"The quarterback at the time was having trouble seeing the silver helmets amongst competitors white and light colored helmets. So Coach LaViolette had them all painted black so his quarterback could more easily see his teammates.

"They ordered a few new black helmets yearly but spray painted the old helmets black every summer for several years until they had turned them all over."

Dave did not know where we got the Fighting Squire Logo.  I had always assumed a student created it modeled on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish logo, but I've seen our exact Squire at a few other schools named Knights, Crusaders, etc.  So it may have been an image in the public domain or perhaps just freely shared back then.  I did see a post from another school where they credited one of their students with designing it, but the timing didn't seem right.  (Here is the difficult to see silver helmet.)

On to the pants.  To me, the Squire color palette has always been a really cool green, black and white.  But we wore yellow football pants during my time there in the 80s, and for sure back to 1979  as shown in this photo from the 1979 Springs game.  Michele said that Dave confirmed my suspicions that it had something to do with the connection to St. Norbert College.  He thinks we got hand-me-down pants from SNC when they ordered new ones.  And there may have been a connection to the Packers as well.  All of those teams were wearing yellow pants with green and white stripes on the side for a time.

Here's a photo of the 1972 Squires vs the Cadets.  White pants with black stripes then.  I wonder if we ever had black pants with a green jersey and black helmet.  That would have been sharp!

The APHS Gymnasium

As mentioned on the "Murder Ball" page, the Pennings Gym was small, but it contained an abbreviated basketball court.  The top of the key nearly touched the center circle.  The baselines were touching the brick wall, and there were pillars along the side.  But if you spent a little time in the gym or in the rooms built around its balconies, you would have noticed some peculiar features.

If you look at the picture above, a few of these oddities are visible.  There is a scoreboard on the wall, though I'm not sure it was ever used when I was there.  There are those boarded up windows above the basket that look like a pressbox of some sort.  If you visited the football locker room (behind the balcony wall on the left) or visited the storage area on the balcony to the right, you would have noticed concrete tiers rising to the outside, as if there were once benches or seats for watching a game.

All of this begs the questions:  Did Abbot Pennings High School play any official games in this gym?  Did anyone ever play real games here?  Small as it was, it appears to be designed for official games.  What's the story?

I posed this question on facebook in Spring of 2012, and I am happy to say that several alumni rose to the challenge and the mysteries are solved!

First, Abbot Pennings never played official games here.  Phil Danen APHS '85, checked with his father, Dan Danen APHS '63.  As Phil recounts, "Checked with my father (Class of '63) who was at APHS when it started in 1959. He says they played all their games at Van Dyke gym."

However, the Pennings building housed DePere's Nicolet High School before West DePere opened.  According to Tim Kolb APHS '82, "My dad said he recalls watching Arnie Herber play basketball games in that gym. This was when it was Nicolet HS, long before it was APHS."  I had to lookup Arnie Herber.  Arnie was a Packer in the Don Hutson era.  One of the first big passers in the NFL.  He grew up in Green Bay and went to Green Bay West according to Wikipedia.  As Tim concludes, "My dad must have seen Herber as a visiting player. He recalls Herber hitting half court shots like they were nothing (of course half court in that gym was pretty short.)"  Indeed!

And so we have the answers.  Nicolet High School built that gym as an official home court and played on it in spite of its size.  Arnie Herber took advantage of this to drain 3-pointers (I know they didn't have them back then) all night long.  By the time we all arrived at Pennings, it was a suitable venue for pick-up games, murder ball and the occasional book sale, but St. Norbert College let us host our games at their Van Dyke Gym, (now the SNC Campus Center) and then the Schuldes Sports Center (now the Mulva Family Fitness and Sports Center)  when it was finished in 1979.

Here is the same view of the gym in 2017 from Brett Dockry's photos.  I like that the Squire Player and Fighting Squire logo were retained on the North (left) wall.  That balcony used to have a partition and was used as the football locker room.

This story was first written and the mystery of the gym was solved on the old website in February 2012.

The Abbey Bar and Hitchhiking Home

The Abbey Bar was kitty corner from Abbot Pennings High School, and for most of my high school years, the drinking age in Wisconsin was 18.  Need I say more?

Of course it was somewhat of a ritual for the seniors, as they turned 18, to walk across the street after school for a beer.  As the year went on, more and more seniors would become legal and the bar would get more and more full at 3pm each day.  Pity the poor senior whose birthday was in June.

Alas, Wisconsin changed the drinking age to 19 in July of 1984, so my senior class missed out on this tradition, but I do find in amusing that in the 1984 yearbook, the Key Club posed outside the bar for our group photo.  I'm not sure you could sneak that photo into many high school yearbooks these days!

The Abbey Bar (with significant upgrades) still operates on the same spot.  This classic facade is gone of course, which is why I'm happy to provide a photo here.  It's a classier outfit now (no shag carpet on the walls anymore) so stop by and check it out when you're in town.

The other story about after school is how you were going to get home.  You could certainly take the school bus, but it didn't show up until school had been out for nearly an hour.  Your other options were to spend $0.35 on the city bus that came a little bit earlier or hitchhike!  The Squires had to be the last cohort of high school kids in the US that were still hitchhiking!  There were usually 20 or so guys on the road in front of Pennings with their thumbs out.  It doesn't sound very safe, but typically somebody's mom or an alumni would stop by and pickup a carload of us.

Murder Ball

Gym class at Abbot Pennings High School involved a variety of sports.  Mr. Minten would usually take us through several classes worth of each activity, baseball, basketball, touch football and various other pursuits.  However, in between sessions, or on special occasions (or perhaps when Mr. Minten didn't feel like trying to get us organized) he would declare that this day would be "Murder Ball!"  Murder Ball is more or less the same as Dodgeball, but at Abbot Pennings, the venue and the projectiles made it unique.

The Pennings Gym was small, but it contained an abbreviated basketball court.  The top of the key nearly touched the center circle.  The baselines were touching the brick wall, and there were pillars along the side.  This picture from a 1982 pickup basketball game gives a nice overview and reminds us how short athletic shorts used to be.

The very features that limited its use for basketball only added to it's charm for Murder Ball.  The centerline divided the court in half.  One for each team, and you could not cross into the opponents territory.  Out of bounds was where you went when you were hit, so you could not hide behind a pillar if you were in play.  The brick walls provided some ricochet, so if you avoided the mat, even a miss might bounce back to your team for another try.

But the true genius of Mr. Minten's version of Murder Ball was the balls that he provided for this game.  The number was 3, but each one was unique, and it was critical to know where they were at all times throughout the game.  First, we have your standard red bouncy ball, standard for "4 Square" and other schoolyard games.  It was soft and bouncy, difficult to throw, but easy to catch.  It was not very accurate, and didn't hurt at all if it hit you.  Then we had the fuzzy volleyball, standard size, but covered with yellow fuzz like a tennis ball.  It was a little more challenging than the bouncy ball, but nothing to fear.

The final ball, the coup de grace, was the tiny white volleyball.  It was so small, so cute, one could hardly imagine the destruction it could render in the hands of a Pennings athlete.  It was about the size of a softball, almost as hard, but lighter.  It had the seams of a volleyball, but it was slick and very hard to catch.  The best bet was to dodge it and hope it ended up on your side of the court, but it would often bounce back off the bricks into the hands of the enemy.  A cruel, but favorite, tactic was to acquire the bouncy ball and the little volleyball on your side.  One team member would throw an easy shot with the bouncy ball.  As the unsuspecting opponent was lining up for an easy catch, he would be drilled with the white volleyball.

Strategy, tactics, agility and pain:  All were found in a spirited game of Murder Ball at Abbot Pennings.

This story was original written for the old website in February 2009.

The Abbey Pond

 

The Abbot Pennings Squires played our football games across the river, at St. Norbert College's Minahan Stadium - Home of the St. Norbert Green Knights.  (A Squire is a Knight's assistant, which is how we got our name.)  The stadium was just off of Broadway, on the grounds of the St. Norbert Abbey.  Conveniently (or inconveniently if you were a freshman) located next to the stadium was a small body of water known as Abbey Pond.

In this 2009 view, the shores of Abbey Pond appear to be well groomed.  There's even a nice path down to the water.  Not so in 1981, when I was a freshman.  Back then it was surrounded by weeds and trees, and the pond itself was slimy and murky from rotting plants and leaves that had fallen in.  I don't remember an island either, but it may have been there.

It became somewhat of a tradition over the years for upperclassmen to round up freshman after football games and toss them into the pond.  By the 1980s, the administration was attempting to crack down on this behavior, and I can kind of see their point.  After all, this happened in the dark after football games, and no swimming credentials were verified before one was tossed in.  The prudent freshman was careful not to mouth off to seniors in the week before a home game, and many frosh would leave a couple of minutes early to avoid the swim.

Minahan Stadium was torn down after they built Donald J. Schneider Stadium on the west side of the river, closer to campus, in 2010.  Here's a view of the pond in the mid-2010s when you could still see the footprint of the stadium.  More algae on it in this one which is more what I remember not wanting to get tossed into!

Random Historical Facts about APHS

Notre Dame Academy's History Page has a small write-up about Abbot Pennings High School with very little detail.  An earlier version of that web page had more history documented.

"St. Norbert High School was founded in 1898 as the first educational institution established by the Norbertine Order in the United States. Founded as a college prep boarding school and located on St. Norbert College campus until 1959, in what is today Boyle Hall, St. Norbert High School began with four registered students and their teacher, Abbot Bernard Pennings, O. Praem.

"In 1959, the location and name of the school changed. St. Norbert High School, whose enrollment had grown to 180 students, became Abbot Pennings High School, and they moved into the building that formerly housed Nicolet High School in West De Pere. In 1967, the Norbertine Order, due to enrollment gains, added to the school's physical facilities by purchasing the Congregational church and converting in into the Music Hall.

"In 1925, Abbot Pennings chose the motto, "Diligamus invicem," "Let us love one another." This motto formed the hallmark in the history of St. Norbert High School and Abbot Pennings High School."

In the 1980s, enrollment was about 300.  The physical campus had not changed much since 1967, consisting of the main school building and the band hall.  I'm not sure Abbot Pennings' "Let us love one another" motto would have gone over too well at an all boys school in the 80s.  I don't recall ever hearing that one.  I always thought our motto was "Milites Sumus Christi" from the Abbot Pennings crest.  My one year of Latin translates it as, "We are Soldiers of Christ."

Pennings always had solid financial support from the Norbertines, parents and alumni, but by the late 1980s, the other two Catholic high schools, Premontre and St. Joseph's Academy, were struggling.  Premontre went coed to try to keep enrollment up, which took away students from the Academy.  The powers-that-be decided that Green Bay would be better served by one Catholic high school instead of three and created Notre Dame de la Baie, housing it on the Premontre site.

They didn't handle the PR part well, and there were candlelight vigils, news coverage, outrage and much sadness in the Pennings community as the school closed in 1990.  We had a good run and won our State Basketball Tournament that final year, which struck me as a positive swan song for the "DePere Abbot Pennings" name, as the state's sports media called it.  The Pennings building is still in it's place, next to the new bridge in DePere.  St. Norbert College owns it and uses it as the "Pennings Activity Center" which houses offices and meeting space for various campus organizations.  (It's Number 24 on this SNC Campus Map.)

One more historical note, I had always heard that the APHS building was originally a DePere public high school (evidently Nicolet High School from the quote above) before the Norbertines acquired it in 1959.  That always made sense to me because it seemed like it was a hundred years old when we were there.  It was and is still quite a sturdy old building.  In the early 1980s, they did a big window replacement project.  Those 8 foot high windows used to be single pane glass with real mullions, and were replaced with a top half made of insulation board and modern sliding windows on the bottom.  It wasn't an accurate historical retrofit of the building, but it didn't look bad and I remember upperclassmen telling me how much better (warmer) it was with the new windows.

In April of 2010, I got an e-mail from Jeff Clancy (APHS '62.)  He updated me on some of the plays they did while he was there.  I asked him some questions about the early days of Pennings because I've always wondered if it was mostly a name change or if Pennings felt like a different school than SNCHS.  Here's his response in an e-mail on April 20, 2010:

"I went to Premontre for my freshman year and started Pennings as a sophomore. That year 59 & 60 was the 1st year in the "new" building and the 1st year as APHS not St. Norbert. It felt like new in that it was all painted & spruced up. However, it had been a school before and therefore didn't feel like a brand new school.

"We did have sports from the start, in fact the St. Norbert 58 & 59 yearbook had sports in it. The biggest difference I think is that St. Norbert was much more of a boarding school on the college campus and Pennings still had some boarders but it was much more dominated by the locals. The boarders stayed on the St. Norbert College campus through their graduation but I don't think we accepted any new boarders. So I guess boarding was grandfathered with the new school.

"Father Meehan was there as a novitiate and became a priest while I was there. Yes, Fr. Feldman was there as principal.

"Like you, I feel privileged to have gone there. I do have yearbooks from 1959 through 1962, so if you have any questions, I would be glad to look them up."

More details on the building from a St. Norbert Collecge handout on the "Pennings Activity Center" building from an open house in Fall 2015:

This three-story brick building was constructed in 1923 as Nicolet High School for the West De Pere School District.  It was purchased in 1959 by the Norbertine Order and became Abbot Pennings High School.  From 1959 until 1990, almost 9,000 young men graduated from Abbot Pennings High School.  The Fighting Squires athletic teams saw their share of success and championships in football, soccer, basketball, cross country, tennis, track and baseball.

The high school closed in 1990 when it consolidated with Green Bay's St. Joseph Academy and Premontre High School which became Notre Dame de la Baie Academy of Green Bay.  Many loyal alumni remain in touch through reunions, golf outings and the Abbot Pennings High School Group on Facebook.

St. Norbert College purchased the Building in August of 1990 and it became Pennings Activity Center.  The building contains the original gymnasium and performance space.  Many of the classrooms have been converted to offices and conference rooms.  For several years it served as the home for many of the College's student programs, including the offices of Cultural Diversity, and the Office of Leadership, Service and Involvment, as well as Communications and ROTC.  Presently space is dedicated to the Campus Safety Office, as well as conference/meeting rooms, and faculty offices.

The building was named to the National Register of Historic Places in June, 2015.  Future plans for the building are not solidified, but it will continue to play a central role on the St. Norbert College campus and remain a landmark in the city of De Pere.

This write-up is a little redundant because they got much of the information from this site.  But there was some info I didn't know so it makes sense to include it here.  I had not heard that it was designated on the National Register of Historic Places until I saw this.  Thanks to Bonnie Elfner (Mom) for sending it on.  She was a tour guide at Pennings during the open house! 

2021 Note:  I wrote most of this 10 or so years ago for the old website.  I tried to note where I got my information, but it is definitely a bit biased to the Pennings narrative of why the school had to close.  I feel like I got most of it right, and I do know the Pennings community felt like the decision was made and jammed through in a less than elegant manner in 1990.  I recently found a sticker from that time that said "The Vision can include Abbot Pennings", but evidently it couldn't.

Rolling Out the New Archive

Squire Nation,

The abbotpennings.com domain has expired, and I am rolling out the new archive for all things Abbot Pennings tomorrow, March 5.  It has been moved to an Abbot Pennings google account I created to store photos and other archives.  I haven't moved all the old content there yet, but I will continue that process so we don't lose anything.  I teased the new photo archive and some yearbook stuff on facebook in the past few weeks.  Let me know what you think.

I am thinking that this site's address, https://abbotpennings.blogspot.com is a sufficient address for the archive, but if anyone thinks we should hang onto the abbotpennings.com domain, I will consider it.

It's a lot easier to update this page, so if you have anything you want to add, send a comment or otherwise track me down.  I am particularly happy with the new yearbook page.  Enjoy!

The Argos - Yearbook Page

Deadline

 I have put myself under a deadline.  I won't be renewing my website hosting in March 2021, so the content of abbotpennings.com will be moving here.  Whatever doesn't make it before the cutover will go dark until I catch up again.

The first page I worked on is the Van Remortel Slide Collection.  This is a box of slides that Mary Jane Van Remortel, one of our school secretaries, saved from the dumpster as the school was closing.  It's a nice glimpse of life at Pennings in the 70s and 80s.  I scanned and shared these in 2012, so you may have seen them before.

https://abbotpennings.blogspot.com/p/photos-van-remortel-slides.html