100th class to graduate Saturday

When members of the Whitefish High School’s class of 2014 are handed their diplomas this Saturday they will become the 100th class to graduate from the school.

The first class to graduate in 1914 included only one member. According to an article in the May 28, 1914 edition of the Pilot, Dorcas Ferguson was the first to graduate from the school after having completed four years of courses.

“She is the first to have gained enough credits to be awarded a diploma,” the article said. “Her tenacity and fixedness of purpose is very commendable. She has done much of her work in small classes, frequently being the only member of it.”

Some 10 decades later, this year’s graduating class boasts 114 members.

According to the “Stump Town to Ski Town” history book, Central School opened on March 13, 1913, and the high school met in one room of the building. To be accredited as a high school, WHS had to have at least one graduate, and Ferguson was it, the history book notes.

No formal graduation exercises were held for the first WHS graduate because the school was “small and to prepare a formal program would require more of the student’s energy than can be spared.”

It appears as though the first graduation ceremony wasn’t actually held until the following year. An article in the May 27, 1915 edition of the Pilot, notes that the first annual commencement was set to take place with two graduates, Dorcas Ferguson and Lucine Jones. However, school documents from the time showed that Jesse Monk and Mary Ellen Hennessey were 1915 graduates also, according to the history book.

By 1919 there were a record nine high school graduates, a fact on which all known records agree, according to the history book.