 Principal Steve Pointer '88 leads the new freshmen in a walk across the
gym in a practice graduation ceremony held the first week of school.
Just a couple of weeks after Michelle's first day of college,
more than 60 freshmen file into the gymnasium at Bridgeport High
School.
"You're all geckos," says principal Steve Pointer '88, who is
waiting for them in a crisp white shirt, tie, and black pants.
They're going to cling to the walls of the high school for the next
"three years and nine months," and then they're going to graduate,
he says.
They try to look bored, even when he explains that the
statistics are against them, that in recent history 20 to 30
percent of students who began ninth grade at Bridgeport did not
finish high school. "That's one in three of you," he says. "That's
not something we want." They frown. "We're here today to show you
what it feels like to graduate."
Someone cues up Pomp and Circumstance, and after scooting
to one end of the gym, Pointer and his vice principal start a
stately march across the floor; right-together, left-together. Then
they wobble. Just a little. And the students erupt in laughter.
Once it's their turn, the girls move self-consciously across the
blond wood basketball court. Then the football players, some
smaller than the girls, follow in their jerseys, off-rhythm and
uncoordinated, half smiles on their faces.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Pointer calls to the empty bleachers
behind him, "welcome to the 95th graduating class of Bridgeport
High School. The graduating class of 2009 are all going to
college." He turns to the students now arranged on the opposite
bleachers. "Please stand, if you are all going to further your
education past high school." They do. Every one of them.
While people have lived in Bridgeport for more than 130 years,
it has always been a somewhat fragile town.
In the 1870s, the site was home to a Chinese community that had
come to find gold in the Columbia River. The Chinese settlers gave
way to the Second United States Infantry, which later determined
the site wasn't ideal and moved west to Chelan and then east to
establish Fort Spokane. The soldiers were followed by settlers who
came first to mine and then to farm.
Then a town was built with the support of East Coast investors.
A flour mill went up, a hotel, and houses, and work was started on
a school. But in the early 1900s, the benefactors ran dry, and
development was halted. It was just the first of many economic
slumps for the speck of a community.
The local farmers realized the spot along the river was ideal
for growing fruit trees. They irrigated with water from the
Columbia and Foster Creek. Their fruit was shipped downriver on
steamboats, and money came back through the bank.
The population grew to 500 and stayed that way until 1949, when
President Truman authorized the first $5 million to pay for a dam
across the Columbia just north of town. The first major
construction drew hundreds of new residents-builders, engineers,
dam workers-creating a boom for Bridgeport that was repeated in the
1970s with a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expansion of what had
been named the Chief Joseph Dam.
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