Fifty years ago, the Mentone High School Class of 1974 was the last class to graduate from the school.
After that, Mentone joined the Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation.
At 11 a.m. Saturday, the Class of 1974 will be the parade grand marshals in the annual Mentone Egg Festival Parade.
Alice Keirn, president of the Mentone Alumni, said she doesn’t know how many graduates will be on the float because the class is having its class reunion in July so many that live out of the area may not come back twice in a short amount of time. Many local graduates from that class will be on the parade float.
After serving as a high school for many years, Mentone served as a junior high before becoming Mentone Elementary School.
“It was basically torn down. Everything but this gym has been torn down, and there had been some additions that were saved. And then they built more, so the gym sits there with all this newer stuff,” Keirn said.
She said it’s one of the few gyms remaining in the county still used by a school corporation.
“Beaver Dam’s gone. Burket’s gone. Etna Green’s gone. Milford’s gone. Leesburg’s is still there, but it’s Maple Leaf. Silver Lake is gone. Claypool had a newer gym that I think Warsaw still might be using,” she said.
After Saturday’s parade, there will be an open house at the Mentone school gym from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. There is no charge to attend.
“The open house will be the gym. And right beside the gym, there is a hallway that has every graduate from the Mentone High School, name or picture, upon that wall. And so that will be open also. It’s not going to be the whole school, it’s just those two things we’re working with,” Keirn said.
Eleven graduating classes will be displaying memorabilia about their class on tables.
There will be a basketball display from the Mentone Historical Museum featuring champion Mentone basketball and softball teams, plus one from Beaver Dam.
“I was doing a display for down at the Mentone Historical Museum of the champion teams that won county tourneys, sectional tourneys and we had a couple winners of regional tourneys back in the 1930s, and I have the letter sweater from one of the guys that played on those teams, and the family has brought them in,” Keirn said.
The Mentone players inducted into the Kosciusko County Basketball Hall of Fame plus two others with ties to Mentone - Price Simpson and Bill Patrick - will be featured. The programs from all five years of the Hall of Fame will be on display, which Keirn has in a binder. The Hall of Fame existed from 2011 to 2015.
“Aaron Rovenstine, who actually graduated from Warsaw, but his mother graduated from Mentone and his grandpa was a long-time elementary teacher at Mentone, and he does a lot of things for sports on Facebook and that type of thing. He’s going to be down there to spend the afternoon with us,” Keirn stated.
While checking out the open house, there will be water and cookies for people to snack on. A table and chairs will be set up near those for people to sit, or they can rest on the bleachers.
A photo booth will have a drop cloth that states this year’s theme for the festival, “Once A Bulldog, Always A Bulldog.” People can take their own pictures with the backgrounds available to make more memories.
“One of my classmates, a cheerleader, has a megaphone and we have pom poms and they can use them to take their own pictures,” Keirn said.
Don Hurd, class of 1975, will be doing interviews during the open house. The interviews will be recorded and later posted on the Mentone Alumni Facebook page.
Keirn said if anyone has any Mentone items they want to donate to the museum, they can bring it with them to be considered.
“We want the players from the other schools to come and see this gym because they played ball in there,” she said. “... We want everyone to come out and have a good time.”