Sutter answers last week's question

Dennis note: Last week the two lead stories in this column centered around Moses Lake and Quincy playing a league basketball game in the grade school gymnasium. My question asked why the game was played in the grade school? Don Sutter called and answered the question. Read on.

Don’s answer: The old high school was known as Central School, which in 1947 was the only Moses Lake Grade School. The new high school was being built, which is now the building known as Frontier Middle School.

The high school in 1947 was housed at the old base hospital at the Moses Lake Army Air Base, as the new high school was being built. The only gymnasium in town was the grade school gymnasium.

The high school students needed to move out of Central School, because the school district needed the Central School space to accommodate the increasing number of grade school students. So, the high school students moved to the Base.

Dennis note: This demonstrates the growing pains experienced by the Columbia Basin in the late 1940s and into the 1950s and 1960s. The Basin was growing and new schools were needed. Of course, the military paid for most of the new schools in Moses Lake. I attended many including Peninsula, Knolls Vista, Midway and, finally, Longview.

Thanks Don. You have cleared a cloudy history into fresh facts.