Dear Santa, We Need a New School, 1922

Letter to Santa from students at Rockingham High School requesting a new school, as published in the Post-Dispatch, Dec. 22, 1922

Dear Santa Claus:

We have been very good for two years in the opera house. We have been very patient. Santa, it is about as cold up here in the opera house as it is where you live, and in the summer time it is so hot we can hardly keep still. Santa, if you were to sit in our room in May, the icicles in your beard would melt. There are very few windows in the building for light and ventilation. Santa, the noise in the street sounds like a boiler factory. Sometimes we have to stop our work until the noise is over. On one side of us is a garage and you know how quiet they are.

The lights that we use are artificial and not very helpful to the eyes. We are also very crowded in here. In Science, we are handicapped with our experiments because we do not have a laboratory. Santa, please bring us a new High School building, modernly equipped, and place it where we shall have room to p lay. Please don’t forget us, Santa.

Your friends, the pupils of R.H.S.