As Rule High turns to rubble, Golden Bear alumni look back fondly

Gypsy Holloway Finley loved everything about Rule High before graduating in 1954.

A cheerleader and beauty queen, she especially enjoyed all her schoolmates and teachers. “The best time in my life was at Rule High,” she said. “I loved the people. We bonded like a family.”

But there is one aspect of the school that saddens her these days. The old school building − located at a hilltop spot on Vermont Avenue near Western Avenue northwest of downtown Knoxville − is being torn down.

“It broke my heart,” she said when hearing the news.

The sounds of mostly silence at the site since its closing as a school in 1991 have been replaced in recent days with the noise of heavy construction equipment beginning the demolition process.

After looking at potential uses for the aging property in recent years, building owner Knox County has begun overseeing the demolition work, with the newer, midcentury section on the western end coming down first.

Bob Grant, a member of the Rule Class of 1965 who started a website devoted to the school several years ago, has taken the news of the razing a little easier than Finley.

“At most, I have mixed feelings over tearing it down,” he said. “On the other hand, I would rather see it torn down rather than it just decay. It serves no purpose just sitting there other than preserving our old memories.”

And what memories this building − formerly on Knox Heritage’s Fragile 15 list of threatened buildings − does have. It was opened as an elementary/ junior high in 1927 and named for Knoxville Journal editor and civic leader Capt. William Rule. After some students protested, it became a full high school, too, with the first class graduating in 1939.

Some additions, including the construction of an auditorium, were also made to the school over the years.

Well-known Rule alumni include longtime former University of Tennessee athletic department official Gus Manning from the class of 1943, former city law director Louis Hofferbert ’44, Knox County Clerk Mike Padgett ’66, and former UT and NFL football player Mike Cofer ‘79. Also, Jerry Helton, the father of former Major League Baseball star and UT quarterback Todd Helton, was Mr. Rule High in 1968 and was drafted by the Minnesota Twins.

Former UT golf coach and Tennessee Tech baseball coach Sid Hatfield also taught and coached there.

But Finley – who was named for evangelist “Gipsy” Smith − remembers it primarily as a solid school for mostly students from working-class families, who could take advantage of the vocational and other programs. Her father was a master mechanic at Appalachian Mills for a period and was able to help support their four children, including now-96-year-old Sunny, but she knows some students struggled financially.

However, the school environment at the time was very positive, the 87-year-old added. “I thought it was the most wonderful school in the world and happiest time in my life,” she continued, adding that her late son, Lance, graduated in 1973. “We all were very busy in school.”

She said the girls in that era took such classes as typing and shorthand, and she later used that while doing secretarial work for such department stores as Rich’s and Sears.

She recalled that the principal at the time was John Humphreys and the whole school was well run, including the study hall under the disciplinarian Rubel Cotter.

“I have sweet memories of Rule, but they ran a tight ship. We didn’t have it easy.”

Diane Byrd Kosier enrolled in the seventh grade in 1965 before graduating in 1971 and remembers Cotter with trepidation, too. “She stood at least 6 feet tall and was an imposing woman,” she said. “When she would scream, you could hear her outside.”

Kosier remembers her first year there was when the school was starting to integrate, but as a white person, she was taught not to look at skin color. She simply thought they were all together in the serious challenge of school, or “prison” as she jokingly called it.

While she admitted the food was not great, she liked much else about the school that drew mostly from Lonsdale and Mechanicsville, and she loved being a Golden Bear and wearing blue and gold. The school was pioneering in offering modern dance and gymnastics, had a caring staff, and many male graduates of her era entered the military and later heavily sprinkled the local police force, she added.

And related to the building, it had a special feature that will be missed by her and will need to be incorporated into any new facility, she said.

“The upstairs part that faces Knoxville had the best view in the city,” the retired administrative and word processing worker said of the elevated location. “They would close the shades because students would stand there and be mesmerized. It was beautiful.”

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Rule High School demolition begins in Knoxville