REGIONALâChuck Comstock of Sanborn took a step back in time to help Cedar Falls author James Kenyon write about the former Sanborn High School.
Comstock, who is 75, was one of a group of 14 Sanborn High School graduates and local historians whose memories of growing up and going to school in Sanborn are recorded in Kenyonâs latest book âEchoes in the Hallways: History and Recollections of 102 Closed Iowa High Schools.â
The book, published Jan. 29 by Meadowlark Books of Emporia, KS, is a collection of stories from former students of closed Iowa high schools from all 99 counties.
Comstock, who graduated in 1963 from Sanborn High School, and the others were interviewed by Kenyon in April 2019 when they swapped stories of favorite teachers, school dances and other traditions that ended with Sanborn High School consolidated with Hartley-Melvin School District in 1991.
Dan Tackett
The mid-1970s brought unimaginable horror and unmasked evil to Lincoln. It was a time when Russell Smrekar and Michael Drabing became household names, spoken in quiet voices at the dinner table, in angry rants at barber shops and taverns.
Smrekar was convicted of the shotgun slayings of a young Lincoln couple in their home. Drabing was sent to prison for the stabbing deaths of a rural Lincoln farm couple and one of their daughters. People who lived in Logan County at the time undoubtedly still remember their names and the bloody carnage they caused.
Mike Harnett, a Lawrence, Kan., resident, certainly recalls the horror of the time. Those indelible memories led Harnett to write a book, “And I Cried, Too: Confronting Evil In A Small Town.” It was not an overnight project.