Web helps West End High live on

Nobly enshrouded in faith and loyalty,
Stands our alma mater,
dear Ole West End High ...

To this day, that verse of the school song stirs souls, including mine. The expansive red-brick building, on Pearson Avenue, seemed like a city unto itself to teenagers passing through its wide hallways, starting in the early 1930s.

"We grew up there," my fellow alum, Cliff Walker, reminds me. "It's where we began to develop our social skills. Many of us kissed our first sweetheart in those halls."

Sadly for us and so many others, our dear West End will close at the end of this school year, along with four other Birmingham schools. Another 11 will close over the next couple years, all part of an effort to make the Birmingham school system financially sound.

"Some people are all upset about it, but I'm not sentimental about old buildings," Cliff says. "It's the people and memories that count."

The 1961 West End graduate is doing his part in keeping people in touch and memories alive through his one-man Web site, West End Online, www.westendhigh.com. The photos are great and the bios delightful, especially for the graduating classes of 1959-1963, to whom the site is geared.

You'll learn that "Big" Jerry Thomas, class of '59, is chair of the department of health and human performance at Iowa State University in Ames; that Kay Forrester Barnes, class of '61, has 11 grandchildren; and that Molly McKee, class of '63, has toured the world working in the travel industry.

Cliff, 65, created the site in 2001 as a rallying spot for a reunion he put together with classmate Kaye Fulbright. More than 400 people attended the reunion, and before Cliff knew what happened, he had a monster on his hands.

"I took down the site after the reunion, thinking we didn't need it anymore," he says. Hundreds of e-mailers and phone callers begged to differ.

To date, the site has had more than 163,000 visitors. It features 1,228 photos and 255 classmate bios. Nearly 1,000 people are listed in its e-mail-a-friend section. They share stories about favorite teachers, such as Mrs. Whaley, who kept telling a student to stop leaning out her third-floor window. Before class one day, the offender went outside and laid down on the ground below the window. When Mrs. Whaley came in and saw him, "I thought she was having a heart attack," Cliff says.

He updates the site when he's not running his company, which buys and sells used computer equipment. The site has spawned other reunions and the West End Girls lunch bunch group. Cliff plans to keep it going as long as interest is strong.

That leads us back to the school song:

Pride of each student,
May she ever be.
Hail to our Alma Mater,
dear ole West End High.