Sherwood Dickie has been with Inglemoor since the beginning.
Fifty years ago, the 68-year-old “semi-retiree,” then a junior in high school, was elected to serve as the school’s very first ASB president. Over the next year, he would lead the inaugural senior class through the many Inglemoor firsts. Now, he’s returned to help his old school celebrate its fiftieth birthday.
“I was able to come up [to the campus] before it even opened, and I saw a brand new school,” Dickie said. “I think that solidified it as a happy time for me. And, when school started, the [other students] joined us at school and helped form our new traditions.”
Dickie and his classmates had spent the previous year as students at Bothell High School before the opportunity to attend Inglemoor arose.
“Bothell was a good school and it was what [the students] were used to, so many of them stayed there,” Dickie said. “Some of us chose to come [to Inglemoor], each for our own reasons: a little adventure, brand new school, a chance to form new traditions.”
In the fall of 1965, 88 of the school’s incoming seniors—known affectionately as the “fighting 88”—transferred to the newly built campus. Earlier in the spring, Dickie had been elected by his former classmates at Bothell to serve as the new school’s student body president.
“You got to feel like you were a part of a new community,” he said. “At the time, you felt like you were part of something important.”
However, Dickie maintains a humble perspective of his own role in shaping this period of Inglemoor history.
“Looking back, my part was relatively small. It was really the people who were important,” he said. “The people who formed the first basketball team, the first choir, the first annual, the first newspaper—they did a lot to start the traditions of a new school.”
Though small, the class of 1966 proved to be a spirited group, Dickie says. Despite starting the year without a mascot, students soon brought their energy to school events—particularly at football games.
“Students came to games to support the school,” Dickie said. “Even though it was a brand new school, it was their school.”
During this first year, Dickie and his executive team of six worked from a small office on campus to create a memorable high school experience for their classmates. Fifty years later, he has returned to campus to head up the committee of Inglemoor administrators, teachers and alums coordinating this year’s commemorative festivities.
Since Dickie’s time here as a student, the campus has changed considerably, adding several buildings during a remodel in the late 90’s.
Yet, all these years later, one thing remains unchanged. Long after the former ASB president and his “fighting 88” have graduated, Inglemoor students have proudly called themselves the “Vikings”—for fifty years and counting.
