The History of Lee School
Lee Elementary School was founded in 1918 and
thousands of students have passed through our education portals. According
to Lola Trusty Lockwood, a teacher at Lee when it opened until 1926, the
school opened in September of 1918 and had only five grades during the
first year but had two principals. The next year the male principal left
Lee to enter the oil business and the female principal remained to guide
the school for several more years.
Throughout the years we have had many new and exciting
things happen at Lee. In the beginning the school was a series of rooms
that were linked together by a porch on
the west side. Later after the halls were enclosed, we needed more classroom
space and a prefab was added. The students of
Lee attended class on the third floor of Wright Elementary during the 1982-1983
school year while Lee underwent a major renovation. In 1994, a new modular
building was added to our school with two new classrooms. Although
this helped, the prefab still had to be used. In 1998, a new third
grade addition was completed and the prefab was retired. During the
2001-2002 school year with the approval of the city of Tulsa, bond money was
used to add on a new library.
Additional bond money was approved and during the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school
years the modular building was removed to make way for a new set of four
classrooms which are being used for our Early Childhood and Kindergarten
classes.
During the early years of Lee, our current playground
was a football stadium. Central High School used the stadium for all of
its home games until about 1930 when the newer Skelly Stadium, on the campus
of Tulsa University, was made available for high school games. The first
night football game ever played in the state
of Oklahoma was played at Lee Stadium in 1927. The game was between Tulsa
Central High School and Sapulpa High School. As time progressed, it was
not uncommon for 10,000 people to make an evening of dinner and a football
game. The stadium continued to be used for junior high games until the
program was abolished in 1937. In the basement of our school are the remains
of the locker room including the shower
stalls and the restroom used by the football fans. We now use these
areas for storage. The second entrance into the
area was permanently blocked off years ago by creating a custodian closet.
The old stadium is gone now, but the arch
column bearing the words Lee Stadium still stands as a proud reminder
of days gone by.
For many years, the custodian lived in an apartment
that was located on the roof of the school. The purpose for this was mainly
to care for the old boiler which has since been
retired, but as time passed so did the need for the custodian to be there
on a full time basis and the apartment has been empty for many years.
The namesake for Lee Elementary was General
Robert Edward Lee. He was born and raised in Stratford, Virginia. In
1829, he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and was commissioned in
the engineers as a second lieutenant. Until 1861, he continued to serve
the U.S. military in many capacities. In April of 1861, Lee resigned from
the U.S. Army and was commissioned as commander in chief of the military
and naval forces of Virginia. He served the Confederate army in many facets
including commander in chief of all Confederate armies until his surrender
to General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865. At the conclusion of the war, Lee
accepted the presidency of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University
and he remained there until his death in 1870. At the conclusion of the
war, he applied for official postwar amnesty, but it was never granted
until 1975 by an act of the U.S. Congress. Lee has been remembered by the
military by his use of strategies that were not commonly accepted until
the 20th century and were well before their time.