“It’s an
important part of New Richmond High School’s history but it has dry-rotted and
deteriorated to the point it cannot be saved and it has become a safety issue,”
said Supt. Adam Bird. “We have investigated the viability of renovating it but
it is not feasible.”
The thin plywood-over-wood frame sign was painted by New Richmond resident Reed Ulrey, whose son Bill Ulrey attended New Richmond High School, and went up in the old Market Street Fieldhouse during the 1954-55 basketball season, Bill Ulrey's sophomore year. Both Mr. Ulrey and his son Bill are deceased.
To
former superintendent Brooks A. Parsons, the Lion’s Den sign means more than
just a symbol of New Richmond athletics. It represents the fighting spirit that
led to the creation of the New Richmond Exempted Village School District that
involved President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Judge John W. Hausermann, the gold
king of the Philippines.
“It went
up during a time when we were fighting to preserve our school district,” said
Parsons, who was New Richmond’s superintendent from 1953 to 1962.
Parsons
and the school board got word that the other school districts in the county had
met twice to form a county wide school district and get the tax revenue from
the Beckjord Power Plant from New Richmond.
“We
learned they had scheduled a third meeting to vote on county consolidation so I
chartered a plane to fly to Columbus and submit our application to become an
exempted village school district,” recalled Parsons, 90, who lives in the
Kenwood area.
“The state questioned if we were large enough
to get exempted village status and we couldn’t get the Census Bureau to do
a special census so we had Judge Hausermann contact President Eisenhower who
ordered a special census for us.”
Hausermann,
a Spanish American War veteran who remained in the Philippines after the war
and controlled the largest gold mine in the islands, met Eisenhower when the
former general and president served in the Philippines under Gen. Douglas
McArthur. Hausermann returned to New Richmond in the 1930s.
“We got
our special census but in the end it did not matter as Pierce Township, and
later Monroe Township, consolidated with New Richmond and our size was no
longer an issue,” noted Parsons, who won two county championships as New
Richmond’s basketball coach in 1950-51 and 1951-52.
Robert
Tucker followed Parsons as both basketball coach and school superintendent and
realized the importance of preserving the Lion’s Den sign.
The sign
remained at the Market Street fieldhouse after the new high school opened in 1965 and the Market Street School became
the district’s middle school.
“After
we built the new middle school in 1972 we moved the Lion’s Den sign back to the
high school gym where we felt it belong,” said Tucker, who was superintendent
from 1962 to 1977.
The
district maintenance staff has added additional screws to hold the sign up
until the end of the season.
“I have
asked athletic director Doug Foote to put together a small ceremony for the
last home game Feb. 8 during which it will be up,” said Supt. Bird. “We may have
some community members interested in coming to the game for that reason or to
take pictures of the sign. I wish we could save it but we cannot take a chance
of it falling.”
