ELY- Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Royal A. Stone gave the keynote address to an overflow audience that turned out here on Oct. 3, 1924, for the original dedication of Ely Memorial High School, which reaches the century mark this year. Stone, who served on the state’s highest court from 1923 until his death in 1942, had just started his hour-long presentation on “Constitution and Citizenship” to a crowd of more than 1,500 people when the lights went out in the new gymnasium.
Undaunted, Stone finished his hour-long address with the aid of a flashlight to “salvos of applause,” according to the report in the Ely Miner. As the applause died down, “Lavick’s ten-piece orchestra,” from Duluth, took over, playing “selection after selection” to keep the audience entertained while the school’s staff searched for the electrical problem that had left them all in the dark.
It was a memorable, if not auspicious beginning for Ely’s new high school, built at a total cost, including furnishings and fixtures, of nearly $1 million.
The lights would eventually come back on, after the trouble was traced to a faulty transformer on a power pole close to the school. With repairs underway, the program continued by flashlight.
The dedication was reported to be a grand affair organized by the Frank Lozar Post of the American Legion, whose local commander, E.W. Hanson, dedicated the new school to the memory of the Elyites who died in World War I.
Leonard Slabodnik, Chair of the Ely Board of Education, presented the building to the people of Ely and Superintendent W. E. Englund accepted it on their behalf.
The end of the dedication included a reading of the names of those who had lost their lives in the recent war. A special arrangement of “Taps” followed, written especially for the dedication. “Mr. Solheim” performed the song accompanied by buglers placed in several parts of the building. After a long moment of silence in honor of the war dead, the dedication closed with the audience singing “America.”
“The lights came on at about this time and the floor was cleared for dancing,” the Ely Miner reported. While around two hundred couples enjoyed the dancing music provided by the orchestra, an estimated 1,500 enjoyed a buffet lunch in the cafeteria “downstairs.”
A major undertaking
The new high school was a project almost two years in the making. Ely’s School District No. 12 hired architect W. T. Bray of Duluth on Dec. 10, 1922 to design the new school building and the board approved the plans in early 1923. Ely area voters approved an $800,000 bond in a referendum held in March of that year.
The school board awarded the contract to build the new school building to Jacobson Bros. Construction as a cost of $544,010. The Ely Miner reported “furnishings and fittings for the new building brought the cost to nearly $1,000,000.”
Though construction started in July 1923, the new high school wasn’t completely done in time for the start of school in September. The Sept. 7, 1924, issue of the Ely Miner described a scene where classes were moving out of the old, cramped high school and into the new one, one classroom at a time.