By MICHELLE PIPPIN / Daily News staff writer

It is more than a tradition for Neosho High School seniors to paint Senior Hill. It is a legacy and one that has been protected and cultivated for nearly half a century.

Charlie Hughes, class of '69, credits tradition for the hill's distinction.
"From the boulevard on up, you've got a beautiful mural," he said. "Because of the tradition, out of Senior Hill has grown respect."

Every tradition starts somewhere however, and in the beginning of this tradition, the seniors who painted the hill were not at all respected artists, but rather, rebellious teen-agers, smitten with school pride at their best, adolescent vandals at their worst.

Dr. Roy Shaver recalled, "Painting things all over town was like a custom for the kids in the 1950s," he said. "Not just in Neosho either. It was really happening all over, in all the little towns."

In Neosho anyway, the kids were painting graffiti on everything they could reach, and some things they had to climb to reach. Dr. Shaver said Neosho was the first city to dedicate its water tower to the high school seniors, but in reality, the high school seniors dedicated it to themselves, many times. The same is true of Senior Hill.

In the beginning ... The '50s

The Class of '56 was the first to graduate from the newly built Neosho High School. Cheerleaders Marlene Miller-Smitson and Jackie Ericson-Lessman were among the Class of '57. Donna Hart was something of a team mascot as she drove an old English Ford car dressed up like a wildcat, with a wildcat head on the front end and a tail protruding from the back. Betty Darnet was the fourth member of what the girls called the "4 S's."

They all had nicknames, each starting with the letter "S": Stuff, Stretch, Sticks and Spider.

"It was a small town," said Marlene Miller-Smitson. "I guess we sort of had to make our own fun."

Like so many other kids in the day, the "4 S's" painted Neosho's overpasses and other various places, such as the hill.

"We snuck out in the middle of the night, and with some white paint, right about the middle of the hill, we painted an S with a four drawn into the tail of it," said Donna Hart. "It was stupid because everyone knew who did it."

"We also painted "Class of '57" on the hill. We weren't the only ones though," recalled Marlene. "Some cheerleaders from the graduating class before us came with us and painted "Class of '56" too."

"We surely got caught though. We practically signed our names with the four S thing," said Donna. "They made us go out and clean it off. We were just bad."

In what is known today as the "gutsiest move in Senior Hill history," the Rev. Tom Thorne, class of '61, along with a group of other freshman football players, saw fit to paint "Class of '61" on the hill, in 1957. Still today, Rev. Thorne declined to say what retaliation he and his freshman friends suffered at the hands of their upperclassmen.

"That would have been a very gutsy thing for a little freshman to do," admitted Marlene. "You just didn't do things like that."

The '60s

By 1961, the seniors still weren't restricting their graffiti to the hill. In fact, the water tower became a popular canvas, and one student rebelled by painting "Class of '61" on the roof of the school's gymnasium.

Billie Gofourth-Stewart was there, and she admits, she participated in the painting of the hill.

"A group of us illegally painted "Class of '61" on the hill in the middle of the night," she recalled. "We used lookouts and hid in the bushes along the road whenever we heard a car coming."

Former Neosho Police Chief George Kelly was just a patrolman during the early to mid-'60s. He said the graffiti on the hill was the least of law enforcement's worries. At least on the hill, the kids had their feet firmly on the ground.

"We didn't work too hard on catching the kids painting the hill," he admitted. "We'd have rather that than to see them climb the water tower to paint it. We were afraid someone was going to get hurt. They were painting street signs all around town, and bridges, and the hill."

By 1969, Senior Hill had become enough of a tradition that it was, at least among students, a protected territory. It was as if the underclassmen could paint the rest of the town, but Senior Hill was off limits. Charlie Hughes, class of '69, said kids from other school districts would spin their tires on the hill, to put black marks on it.

The same Neosho kids that were defacing the hill behind their own school with painted graffiti came to protect their hill and its, albeit clandestine, artwork.

"It was an honor to paint the hill," said Charlie Hughes. "A big group of us went around midnight and painted our initials on it. We sent one guy to the top of the hill as a lookout and when cars came, we hid in the trees. The cops would drive by and shined their lights into the trees."

The '70s

The tradition continued into the '70s with covert operations, conducted in the cloak of darkness, late in the night, complete with lookouts and escape routes in place.

"It was about midnight, and I'd taken a couple of my older friends with me," reminisced Glynda Sanders-Ball, class of '72. "I took a can of red spray paint that I found in my dad's garage. My friends parked the car on the hill and kept it running while I jumped out and painted "Sanders" across it.

"It was the worst thing I'd ever done; my one act of senior rebellion," continued Glynda. "My father, Glen Sanders, was an industrial arts teacher in the district, so we never wanted to do anything to embarrass him. But I do remember, the adrenaline was running. We were half excited, I think, because I'd actually done it, and half afraid we'd been caught. All evening we kept looking over our shoulders; we just knew the police had seen us, or our car, or something."

Because the kids primarily used oil-based paint, the road was very slick in wet weather. Kids were still climbing the water tower to leave their mark as well.

"The kids were going around painting signs, bridges, the hill, the water tower, the whole town," recalled City Manager Jim Cole.

Cole has worked for the city since 1973 and during the late '70s, high school seniors struck the water tower on Finney and Dewey Avenue armed with spray cans and paint brushes.

"They painted their class of ... whatever class it was," recalled Jim Cole. "It happened to be right after the city spent $50,000 to paint the water tower. We did, along the way, end up hiring someone to paint on it "Neosho Wildcats," or something like that."

The tower has long-since been repainted again but still today, the tower reads, "NEOSHO - Dedicated to the "SR."

The '80s

Police Chief George Kelly began to block off the street in bad weather due to the slick conditions the paint caused in the late '70s, and eventually, in the early '80s, the police blocked the street off for the kids to do their painting. Generally after the graduation ceremonies, the seniors would make their mark on the hill.

"I said, 'These kids want to paint, lets give them a place to paint,' " said Jim Cole. "And you know, after we gave them Senior Hill, they've never painted the city's water tower again."

Although it was "becoming" a condoned event, it was not without its flaws still. One gentleman, in 1981, drove his car up the hill while students were painting their names and artwork, with the sole purpose of making a mess of their work. The students were enraged and began throwing buckets of paint on his car. Eventually, Neosho police officers arrested the gentleman, appropriately enough, from the car wash were he was washing the paint from his car.

"The tradition developed rather slowly," admitted Dr. Shaver. "As it became a tradition, there were one or two kids along the way who got carried away and got into trouble, but it eventually came around."

By the mid-'80s, painting Senior Hill was a privilege for the seniors, not a right. It seemed every year a buzz would circulate the high school campus as to whether or not the seniors were going to get to paint Senior Hill, according to 1985 Senior Class President Angela Kruse-Jones.

"Our senior class officers had to write a letter to the city, requesting our turn to paint the hill," Angela recalled. "There was an incident during my senior year that really caused a stir."

Eric Jensen, a sophomore in 1985, drove the driver's education car straight into the ditch when he lost control coming down the slickly-painted Senior Hill. Angela's younger brother, Jeff Kruse, class of '87, was in the back seat.

"It had just rained, I remember," he said. "We were sitting at the top of the hill and one of those little Volkswagen bugs was driving up the hill, only the guy was driving on the sidewalk, not the road. We couldn't figure out why until we tried to drive down the hill and slid off into the ditch."

So the town's graffiti problems were coming under control by the '80s, but the problem of Senior Hill's slickness continued to plague law enforcement officers, school administrators and the city council.

Between 1985 and 1987, the city of Neosho began to require the kids to use a latex paint, rather than an oil-base, and law enforcement officers supervised the event, adding sand to everyone's paint cans in an effort to reduce the slickness.

In 1987, the buzz on campus was that the city was not going to let the kids paint the hill that year. In fact, the buzz was right.

"The city council wanted it stopped," said Kelly. "I went to the high school and talked to the seniors myself, and then a group of seniors went to the next council meeting and pled their case."

Jeff Kruse was the senior class president in 1987. He addressed the council and spoke of tradition, honor and pride, and explained that the seniors had the approval of the police department. The council members granted the seniors' request. If the required paints were used, and sand added, and if the "painting" was restricted to the hill only, the kids could continue painting Senior Hill. Thus began the actually tradition of an organized event, "the painting of Senior Hill."

The art of painting today's Senior Hill

"That thing is a work of art," said Kelly. "At one time, an airline called me to ask what the beautiful painting was that they saw over our town. The passengers would all crowd at the plane's windows to admire the bright colors they saw from miles above in the sky. It has become something that Neosho can be very proud of."

"I've always been impressed with the quality of the artwork on Senior Hill," said Dr. Shaver. "The hill itself has been given national coverage at times, on cable news channels and other print publications. Other towns have attempted to duplicate the hill, such as Seneca High School, who's come to allow its seniors to paint the street that runs behind their football field. Neosho kids take a great deal of pride in painting the hill. I think the kids get more paint on them than the hill does now, but it's a wonderfully, beautiful thing."

Still today, graduates of the Class of '57 take pride in Senior Hill as well.

"I came back to Neosho five years ago, for my 40th reunion," said Marlene Miller-Smitson, who is now a high school teacher in Tampa, Fla. "Some other cheerleaders and I snuck to the top of the hill before the reunion and repainted "Class of '57" in some bright, florescent color. There was some guy mowing his lawn at the top of the hill, as I remember, and he was laughing his butt off at us. There we were, all dressed up in our in nice clothes, spray painting the hill."

Marlene said she'd be returning to Neosho this fall for the All-School Reunion, slated for September.

"Oh, we'll be back," she said. "And, you can believe, we're going to have to freshen the paint."

The All-School Reunion is scheduled for Sept. 27 and 28, and on the itinerary is the painting of Alumni Hill, which is Sherman Street that winds behind Neosho High School. For more information on the All-School Reunion, visit neoshoalumni.org.