I spend a lot of time taking photos of places, digging through old newspapers and maps, figuring out their stories, and trying to write about what I saw. The other day, I realized that my first article like that ran just over twenty years ago! As a freshman on the newspaper staff at tiny Cowan High School in Delaware County, Indiana, the construction of a massive auxiliary gym was the first story I ever chose to cover.
I wasn’t sure about joining the newspaper staff. I was daunted by the prospect of selling ads to local businesses as part of my grade, but on the flip side, I was fifteen, nosy, and equipped with my mom’s Sony Mavica FD-75. Smartphones were still a few years away in 2005, but that Mavica captured magnificent 0.3-megapixel JPEGs at 640×480 resolution and saved them to onboard floppy disks! Once I decided to join the paper, I used the Mavica to document Cowan’s new fieldhouse as it went up. I took photos of what I could through the windows, kept an eye on construction progress, and interviewed the athletic director about the project. I even found an unlocked door.
I didn’t have permission to go inside, but the budding urban explorer in me got the better of my burgeoning prefrontal cortex. I slipped through the opening to snap a few pictures of the gym’s unfinished interior. Fortunately, those photos -and any evidence of my illicit trip- never made it into print. I can’t remember if my teacher wisely put the kibosh on my surreptitious images or if I experienced an unlikely second of good judgment, but all I know is that the pictures never appeared, and my brief career as a trespasser ended before it really began.
Ultimately, I decided to cover the project through more legitimate means by photographing the gym from the outside. Even so, I was a skeptical freshman who struggled to understand why a small school like Cowan needed what seemed like an athletic palace, especially when we were still wheeling around carts loaded with two-inch-thick laptops running Windows 98. The contrast was hard to ignore! I also wondered why the enormous gray building looked so different from the brick school it was attached to. Even the giant Blackhawk emblem bothered me, since it didn’t match the version painted at center court in Cowan’s main gym.
I fancied myself a hard-hitting reporter. I had questions that needed answering- real ones, dammit- and I’m glad I was curious enough to question what was happening. Still, beneath all that adolescent skepticism from a childhood steeped in Mad magazine and Ting Soda, was something much more enduring: I enjoyed watching the building take shape. Better yet, I loved documenting its progress. Returning to the same spot and discovering that yesterday’s bare steel had become today’s wall was fascinating! Taking pictures was only part of the appeal, though: I wanted to understand why the building was going up, what purpose it would serve, and what the people responsible for it had to say. Those instincts never really left me. In fact, they’re pretty much responsible for what I do on this blog.
Not long ago, I finally decided to answer my freshman-age questions: why did little Cowan build such an enormous gym? Some context probably helps: Cowan High School serves students in a rural, thirty-square-mile township just south of Muncie. The present building’s oldest areas -thirty-two classrooms and its original gym- were completed in 1958 as an addition to a 1914 school so crowded that hallways had been pressed into service1. A north wing was added to the high school in 19692, then a new elementary replaced the old building in 19763.
Cowan considered another major expansion in the early 1990s when school officials proposed a $7.7 million project featuring a swimming pool and auditorium. Monroe Township’s rural tax base was divided, to say the least4, so the board eventually scaled the project back to $4.8 million. The resulting work enlarged the library, rewired the school for new technology, added a band room and cafeteria, and updated its classrooms5.
The expanded Cowan High School was the first version I knew. The district had turned its attention to athletics in 2004, though, when Cowan Community Schools announced a $6.9 million improvement project centered on a new auxiliary gym. Plans called for three basketball courts, a walking track, a weight room, and a fitness room to help provide more equitable athletic opportunities under Title IX. Reportedly, no other high school in Delaware County had anything quite like it⁶!
I probably should have cut the school a little slack when I was writing for the paper. Before the auxiliary gym opened, space was so scarce that basketball practices sometimes started at six in the morning7! I’d dragged myself to a few of those early practices myself, and finding somewhere to play a game wasn’t much easier. My team alternated between the cramped elementary gym and the varsity gym at the high school depending on what was available. Cowan Elementary even had basketball goals mounted in its cafeteria! In hindsight, the district’s need for more athletic space was far more obvious than my freshman self was willing to admit.
The massive new gym opened to students in November 2005 and to the public the following January8. Ironically, I never became much of a user of the building I’d spent so much time documenting and waiting for. High school led me to band instead of basketball and, aside from gym class -lifting weights, huffing and puffing around the track, and heaving half-court shots during knockout- the auxiliary gym was mostly just there. Its construction mattered to me far more than the finished building ever did. Two decades later, I’ve never been back inside.
I wish I could remember what Cowan’s school newspaper was called, and I’d give a lot to reread the stories I wrote for it. More than anything, though, I want to find those old floppy disks! Somewhere, maybe at my mom’s, there might still be a collection of old photos showing bare framing, unfinished walls, views through construction windows, and even those shots from the day I discovered that somebody had forgotten to lock a door. I’m sure the pictures are terrible from a technical standpoint, but more than twenty years later, they’d be absolutely priceless to me.
At this juncture, what strikes me is how little my basic process has changed. At fifteen, I noticed a building changing, decided it was worth documenting, took pictures, talked to somebody who knew more than I did, and wrote about it for anyone interested enough to read. Floppy disks became memory cards, the newspaper became Hiding in Plain Sight, and the auxiliary gym became old schools, malls, bridges, courthouses, flowing wells, and everything else I stumble across.
As a high school freshman, I thought my story was about why little old Cowan High School needed such a gigantic new gym. As it turns out, though, the more interesting story was unfolding on the other side of the camera. Back then, I was just a curious kid with a Sony Mavica, unaware that the things I enjoyed most about the experience -taking pictures, asking questions, and documenting a place as it changed- would become the foundation of what I still love doing today. I’m grateful to Cowan and the fortunate set of circumstances for giving me the opportunity to discover that passion.
Sources Cited1 Blosser, D. (1958, November 15). Open House to Be Held Sunday for New Cowan School Addition. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 12.
2 Iliff, D. (1967, September 14). Cowan School Addition Is Step Nearer. The Muncie Star. p. 1.
3 Monroe School Corporation to Dedicate School Sunday (1976, May 15). The Muncie Star. p. 3.
4 Davies, T. (1993, January 28). Public opinion split on Cowan school renovation. The Muncie Star Press. p. 2.
5 Zoltan Rendfeld, K. (1993, December 2). Cowan high School renovation OK’d. The Muncie Star. p. 3.
6 Boyd, O.T. (2004, July 21). Cowan schools to build new gym, upgrade facilities. The Muncie Star Press. p. 3.
7 Roysdon, K. (2005, October 10). Official says new gym will benefit school, community. The Muncie Star Press. p. 4.
8 Shannon, S. (2006, June 5). Auxiliary gym to remain open through summer. The Muncie Star Press. p. 16.
