After going over the script for months, the MHS Foundation is now ready for its big scene.
The nonprofit fundraising arm for Morgantown High School has formally announced “A Stage of Excellence,” a $4 million campaign to restore the once grand auditorium at the building on Wilson Avenue.
When Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated the space in 1940, war clouds were layering in Europe and attack on Pearl Harbor that propelled the nation into two world wars across the Atlantic and Pacific was looming.
In West Virginia, people remained mired in the Depression.
In Washington, D.C., the New Deal delivered by Mrs. Roosevelt’s husband, Franklin, was still laboring, mightily, to turn strapped households around.
Still, the First Lady had lofty hopes for that high school auditorium – and not just as a showcase for the arts.
She wanted the boards of that stage to also be planks for dialogue and discourse.
“A meeting place for all members of the community to discuss the important problems of government,” as Eleanor decreed on that May evening 84 years ago.
Through the early 2000s, the auditorium was all that.
A skinny kid named Don Knotts found out on the main stage that he could make an audience laugh, and, more importantly, also make it believe that the fictional character he was playing in a school production was suddenly, gloriously real.
Trevor Nicholas, a big kid with a bigger voice, discovered the songs he was bringing could make an audience weep, cheer and even dance in the aisles.
These days, the aisles aren’t fit for dancing in the auditorium, which has seen better days under the footlights.
Seats are broken.
Chunks of plaster are falling from the walls.
The lighting is inoperable, with no real catwalk in place to bring new rigging for a concert or play.
ADA compliance is missing – just like the star who suddenly comes down with the flu on opening night.
In its current state, the auditorium just isn’t safe, foundation treasurer Mark Nesselroad told Monongalia County Board of Education members during a meeting last May.
That’s when talk first started about the $4 million total for the rehab – with hopes of the school district kicking in the first $2 million in general revenue dollars.
Besides providing the opportunity for a venue to again engage a college town that already fosters the arts, there’s also a bottom line for the BOE, Nesselroad said.
In the years the auditorium has sat vacant, the treasurer said, the district has ponied up more than $300,000, counting all the related costs, to rent the Metropolitan Theatre on High Street for its theatrical productions and other events.
The auditorium, Nesselroad said, would be a natural for Morgantown High’s annual Mohigan Idol talent show, a district-wide event featuring students from all grades that raises money for WVU Medicine Children’s.
Call it being true to your school, he said then.
And, he added, true to your coffers.
Money currently being spent on securing other venues, he said, could be funneled right back to the school district.
The auditorium, he said, could also resume its original role.
“There’s no reason it can’t be used by the community,” Nesselroad said, echoing Eleanor Roosevelt.
In its announcement of the campaign this past week, the foundation announced that Mon’s BOE is contributing the money for the project.
Visit Morgantown High School Foundation Inc. on Facebook for a link where you can contribute online — along with viewing a timeline and vintage photos from when the auditorium was a daily destination for school activity.
The foundation, meanwhile, has long been known for its efforts to advance the mission of Morgantown High.
It helps purchase teaching materials and played a big role in the refurbishing of Pony Lewis Field and its press box and related facilities in the early 2000s.
Most recently, the foundation bankrolled the republishing of a well-received biography on graduate Tom Bennett, who died in Vietnam and was posthumously recognized with the Medal of Honor for his bravery as a combat medic.
