Former Jefferson City School District faculty and staff are showing "Jay pride never retires" by reuniting to create a float for this year's homecoming parade.
For the last several weeks, several JC Schools' retirees gathered in the basement of a Jefferson City home to create a float "the old-fashioned way" for the Jefferson City High School homecoming parade, said Karen Brickey, who worked about 30 years at JC Schools as a math teacher, administrator and assistant athletic director.
About 70 retirees will participate in the parade this evening, Brickey said.
The retirees remember building floats in classmates' garages, basements and barns as students. They put an abundance of effort into those floats to make them grandiose in their own unique ways, using tissue paper and staples to highlight colorful signs, along with chicken wire, cardboard and vibrant paints to create three-dimensional replicas of jaybirds.
"We just decided it was time to build a float the way it used to be done because I don't even know if students anymore have seen what floats used to be like," Brickey said. "What you'll see in the parade, you'll see a lot of trucks with flatbeds and kids up on hay bales, and they'll be wearing their softball jerseys or they'll be wearing their football jerseys and just throwing candy to the kids. I would say we're going to be the only float that will have the tissue papers."
Many of the retirees consider themselves family, evidenced by how they teased each other and recalled memories while eating pizza and stapling tissue flowers around a black and red sign that read "Jay Pride Never Retires" earlier this month.
"We still have Jay pride," said Linda Ringo, who taught physical education for 50 years, with 33 of those at JCHS. "That's what unifies the family. We all wore it, inside and out."
A small group of JC Schools retirees got the idea during last year's homecoming season. Word spread like wildfire, and the group of participants grew exponentially.
"We're doing this for the kids we had, to let them know that we still care. We'll always care," Ringo said, holding tissues in one hand and a stapler in the other.
"They're still our kids," Dennis Lock added, joking he hopes "they don't throw candy back at us."
Lock taught social studies for a total of 40 years, 30 of those at JCHS.
It's not just retired teachers working on the float; retired coaches, cooks, custodians, counselors, secretaries and others have also jumped in to help.
"It's a reflection of the way things were when we taught," Ringo said. "There was some job for everyone, and we were glad to cross disciplines and help each other out. That's why the school is so successful."
While some retired JC Schools employees will ride on the float, others will ride in a black Cadillac convertible and a red Camaro convertible as the group's "retired royalty," Brickey said.
In one corner of the basement, small glue sticks sprinkled Karla Denny's makeshift work station as she carefully glued red letters onto a poster board, spelling out "retired royalty."
Denny taught English and yearbook at JCHS for 14 years before jumping over to counseling, which she did at Nichols Career Center for 19 years before retiring.
A JCHS graduate herself, Denny said she has "Jay pride in my blood," and that didn't end on her last day with the school district.
"While we're retired and having fun, what we feel for the school and our Jay pride has not retired, so this is our way to continue and give something back in our retirement to the school district," she said.
With a Disney theme of "The Happiest Place on Earth," the JCHS Homecoming parade starts at 6:30 p.m. today in downtown Jefferson City. The parade will travel east on High Street from Broadway to Monroe streets, turn left on Monroe Street to East Capitol Avenue, turn left onto East Capitol Avenue and travel to the west side of the Missouri Capitol.