October 1983: Bartlett Homecoming

Bartlett High School's 1983 football homecoming was held the week of October 21, 1983. We had built the sophomore float across the street from my house at Terrance Latour's house, and on Thursday evening we had had the homecoming parade on the streets around the high school campus. As I recall, I had ridden on the sophomore float, and the Bartlett High School band had led the parade. Jessie Yancey, Eugene West and Randy Mickens were all out there watching the parade, and we had thought that our float was certainly the nicest, and that we would win the competition. Had we known the political realities of homecomings, we would have realized that the senior float would win the contest, regardless of which float was really the best.

Unfortunately, the outcome of the parade float competition didn't sit well with someone, and the senior float was destroyed during the night after the parade, leading the high school principal Tate W. Thomas to cancel the afternoon pep rally that had been scheduled for homecoming. This led to several class walkouts and some protests, one of which was a march through hallways with signs reading "No Rally, No Game". Apparently, there were meetings between student government officials, faculty members and the administration, and later in the day, an agreement was reached and a pep rally was held. I don't remember much about the homecoming game, except that there was a bonfire, that the game was against Millington, and that we won.

This was also around the time that Bartlett's student newspaper changed names from the Gleaner to the Panther. The rationale was that Bartlett was no longer the big agricultural high school and community that it had once been, and our mascot was after all the Panther. But I found the name change somewhat disappointing, to say the least. Even more disappointing was the fact that although the Gleaner had existed for almost 60 years, our school had none of the back issues. Apparently, they were never preserved.