Last weekend, the Central High School Class of 1972 met to remember the historic moments spent together as members hosted a “Double Nickel” Celebration for classmates who will turn 55 by the year’s end.

Dwain Kyles, Kelvin Willis and Don Jones – three of the four “wild and crazy guys” that coined the phrase “Double Nickel Celebration” for Central High School classmates turning 55 by the year’s end. The fourth was Theron “Popsy” Northcross, who died in September. (Photos by Florence M. Howard)

Faye Williams had her camera at the ready to record memories at the “Double Nickel Celebration” for the Central High School Class of 1972.

Cecil Hervery and Carl Norvell, members of the Central High School Class of 1972, were among what Norvell termed the “rabble-rousers that challenged some of the vestiges of segregation in Memphis City Schools.

Kelvin Willis, event organizer, coined the phrase “Double Nickel Celebration” for the idea that blossomed last year when he, Dwain Kyles, Don Jones and Theron “Popsy” Northcross  — “four wild and crazy guys” talked about how they and a few other classmates would mark their 55th birthdays.

When Northcross passed away in September 2008, his funeral drew a fairly large, cross-section of grieving classmates. Organizers decided to open up the event and include others.

“We reached out to people who really impacted our own (lives),” said Kyles, who hosted Saturday’s barbeque picnic around his family’s pool on South Parkway. ”We didn’t try to get everyone to come,” he told the group of 50 to 60 classmates gathered at the Masonic building, now owned by friends Peter Calandruccio and Rob Pickering, who donated the space.  

As class members became reacquainted, production began on a DVD sharing their collective thoughts on integration, the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Black Mondays, the presidency of Barack Obama, the times of their lives, and each other.

The class entered Central in 1969; 315 of them graduated in May, 1972.  During freshmen year, they were among the estimated 62,518 school children who walked out of their schools on October 10.  It was called Black Monday, a day to protest the lack of diversity on the Memphis City School Board and to demand equal representation for blacks.  

Amid the genuine smiles, bear hugs, and hearty handshakes at Friday’s mixer held at the old Masonic Lodge on National near Summer, Cecil Hervery and Carl Norvell recalled another protest march as well.

“We were rabble-rousers,” said Norvell. “We walked out of the school.  We weren’t going to take it. We walked all the way to the Board of Education. Maxine Smith (then executive secretary of the Memphis Branch NAACP) joined us as we were coming up Union.”

Norvell, who now works for a Mississippi construction company, said in his junior year black students became fed up with the discrimination and the barriers they encountered if they wanted to join the cheerleading squad, student council and other extracurricular activities. They marched to 2597 Avery and complained to the superintendent.

The next year, things began to change. Hervery became the first black Drill Team commander and repeated the success of the previous year when Central earned honors as drill team champions.  Jacqueline Partee was elected secretary of the class.

“The High School” Legacy

Friday’s program not only acknowledged Popsy Northcross, but other deceased members of the class. Greg McCullough, the current principal of Central – often viewed as “The High School” since it was the first in Memphis – was presented with a $500 donation from the class.  

The organizing committee – which included Jimmy Calandruccio, Jacqueline Partee, Rinnie Wilson and Joe Young in addition to Willis, Kyles, and Jones – announced plans to establish the Double Nickel Foundation to provide continued financial support to their alma mater. Willis, a banker, and Kyles, an attorney, live in Chicago, and Jones is president of an Atlanta-based media production company, Alchemy Media and Marketing, Inc.

But the larger legacy may well turn out to be the one they worked together to create over the weekend. Alchemy Media specializes in DVD projects, such as the Black Legacy Series, that promote awareness and preserve the legacy of African Americans and their organizations. It began videotaping the DVD started on Friday and continued through Sunday during worship service at Monumental Baptist Church. To prepare, Kyles urged classmates to dig deep and tell how relationships were formed at Central:  “Let’s not let it be fluff.”

“The DVD will capture the untold story of our lives in the place where Dr. King was killed,” said Kyles,.

Tentatively titled “Double Nickel Celebration: Perspectives of a Generation,” the video will be ready for distribution in eight to nine months. “This is the kind of production our company does, interactive exploratory of a place and time,” said Jones, who remembers that the first black students graduated in the Class of 1969, just three years before his class

“The first few classes had come and gone. We had a few more blacks and got into real issues,” said the 1972 graduate and DVD producer.  “By the time we left, some things had changed over there.  

“We provided a service,” Jones said, “shoulders on which other classes could stand.”