Being There

   Niles East High School, 42, of Skokie, died Wednesday. Death was attributed to dwindling enrollment.
   Built by the Works Progress Administration in 1938, Niles East had a distinguished career as a suburban high school. It even looked the way a high school should look, with its imposing three-story, art deco facade, a sprawling front lawn, and ivy crawling up the walls.
   It was a place where Archie and Reggie and Betty and Veronica could have stepped out of the comic books and felt at home.
   In the 1950s, when the suburban population grew faster than Calcutta's, Niles went from 1,200 students to 2,400 in four years. Two other schools -- Niles West and Niles North -- were built to serve the more than 8,000 students who eventually lived in the district.
   But those students grew up. The birth rate went down. In its last year, Niles East had an enrollment of only 1,600.
   ON ITS LAST DAY, as the last students took the last exams, Niles already seemed like a ghost school.
   The halls were empty except for a few students cleaning out lockers as they left their exams.
   The classrooms were locked, and packing boxes were stacked along the walls.
   And at the end, as the students left, they were subdued. A few cried.
   "It's so quiet," one said. "It's so sad," her friend said. The school administration did not want to make a big deal of the last day.
   "We tried to make every regular activity during the year a little bit special, a little extra," said principal Galen Hosler.
   "But we didn't want to do anything different today. I didn't want to have this cartoon image of myself leaving, closing the door to the school, and shooting it like a dying horse."
   The administration also hoped that the East students would begin to identify with their new school -- West and North.
   "THEY ARE SAD about East closing," Hosler said. "But in the last month, they are kind of thinking of themselves as Vikings and Indians [names for teams at the other two schools] and that's good.
   They used to think of themselves as Trojans, singing, "Nilehi, Nilehi. Go out and win this game. We'll help you try. The Trojans were a mighty race. They fought with lots of vim. Let's keep our fighting spirits. And we'll win!"
   The song wasn't all that terrific, never quite as inspiring as Evanston Township's "ETHS, we will fight for you." And the Trojans usually were far from mighty, though in recent years the wrestling, fencing, and gymnastics teams were champions -- and the baseball team was a winner 20 years ago.
   But Niles East won its share of trophies, and they stand in cases outside the new gym and the old gym, which were silent but for years shook with cheers, especially on nights when it appeared, however briefly, that Niles actually might beat Evanston.
   Students at Niles changed through those years.

   IN THE 1950s, there were fairly docile, well-mannered and hard-working. They wore white bucks and loafers, khaki slacks and huge, full skirts, crew cuts and curls -- except for the "hoody" kids, who wore black leather jackets, jeans that appeared to defy gravity, and grease on their hair.
   Hanging an unpopular adviser in effigy off the front of the school was considered wildly rebellious behavior. Going to Roundy's, the snack shop across Lincoln Avenue from the school, was vaguely racy, mostly because it was where everyone went to puff madly on cigarets. Indeed, it was so full of smoke at lunch it looked like a three-alarm fire whenever anybody opened the door.
   In the 1960s and 1070a, students did such things as walkout in protest over a teacher's firing. They wore the long hair and bombed-out clothes that were the uniforms of their times. And they were different in the classroom.
   "They weren't as interested in learning anymore," said Billy Henry, who has taught math at Niles since 1956. "A kid who is an 'A' student now would have been a strong C-plus or b-minus before student radicalism.
   THEY AREN'T AS radical as they were. I think the pendulum is swinging back, but it has a long way to swing until it is as it was in the 1950s and early '60s."
   On the third floor, Bernard Welch, who has taught chemistry for 26 years, also reflected on the changes in students.
   "In the turbulent '60s, there were a lot of discipline problems," he said. "The students became very independent and questioning of authority. They were restless, bewildered, upset."
   "Students for the 1950s seemed to do more homework. They could be relied on to fulfill assignments. Kids still can be, but not as they used to. Maybe one reason is that more students have jobs.
   "I think students are as smart as before. The problem is that teachers have to be aware of changes and adjust."
   As Welch talked, the clock was winging down on Niles East. He looked out the window and recalled trees that once graced the campus. He recalled when girls wore pretty dresses and not-so-pretty beehive hairdos. And he recalled when Niles seemed to have a dance a month, instead of only three a year.

   IN THOSE DAYS, each year's prom committee would try to outdo the one from the year before. Proms were held in the grand ballrooms of Chicago hotels, with the most famous big bands of the day playing for kids whose tasted had turned to Elvis and "Don't Be Cruel."
   In 1957, the prom was held in the Edgewater Beach Hotel. The band was Duke Ellington's. Some of the prom-goers were disappointed because they thought the Duke was hard to dance to. How were they to judge the relative merits of "Sh-Boom" versus "Satin Doll?
   Downstairs, in the main hall, which was filled with the racket of shouting students and clanging lockers for 42 years, Lisa Potocki and Lauri Sacks walked quietly toward the door.
   Lisa was crying a little. "It's a good school," she said. It seems like I don't really believe this."
   Outside, by the side door, where Niles students always gathered, the last ones stood around.

   "THERE HAS BEEN a lot of crying," Michele Cohen said. "Everyone is upset. We are losing our friends. Some are going to North, some to West."
   "They should close our school. It's the oldest one. It's the best one."
   "The other schools don't want us and we don't want to go," said Lisa Freed.
   Elisa Becker, Ann Naumes, and Jenny Stahlberg stood nearby. They said they were friends and were being split up. "This school has been like a home," they said. "It's like moving. But we'll keep in touch. Niles East lives on."
    I hope so, because Niles East was my high school too.