What's in a name? Naming (and Almost Renaming) Simley
Unless you're from Inver Grove Heights, "Simley" is confusing. It's not an easily-recognizable figure from Minnesota history. It's not Sibley, the former namesake of Henry Sibley High School -- look at one boxscore from the Pioneer Press to see the scores of the annual Simley-Sibley football game flipped, flipped back for the stats, and flipped again for the team records.
That was a problem that, in 1985, the ISD 199 school board thought they'd solve once and for all:
They proposed to change the name of Simley High School.
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First, the man himself: Irwin T. Simley.
Born to Norwegian immigrants in Portal, North Dakota, in 1887, Simley later earned a bachelor's degree from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and his master's from Columbia University in New York. After spending time as superintendent of schools in Rugby and Rolette, North Dakota, Simey crossed into Minnesota, serving as superintendent in Thief River Falls (the first of two ISD 199 figures to do so) before taking the same job in South St. Paul in 1926.
Yes, South St. Paul.
Though present-day Inver Grove had several rural one-room schoolhouses, the two-story Inver Grove Elementary, and after 1953 the Salem Hills School, Inver Grove, you'll remember, was mostly farmland save for Inver Grove Village along Concord and 65th. After eighth grade students from those districts would bus, drive, or walk to South St. Paul High School.
I should note, here, that some of this Simley research comes from three excellent students in Tom Goetz's 2021-22 AP US History class: Hao Phung, Liam Sanford, and Kathan Wells.
As early as 1957, though, South St. Paul administrators had seen projections that they would not be able to handle an influx of students from new suburban housing developments in the South Grove neighborhood of present-day Inver Grove Heights. A November 1959 letter to ISD 199 superintendent Karl Dahlager confirmed what the Inver Grove-Pine Bend district had been preparing for: they would need to furnish their own high school.
Shortly after his 1957 retirement, I.T. Simley had come to work for the newly-formed ISD 199 as an "education consultant". With Simley's help, superintendent Karl Dahlager and the ISD 199 school board passed a May 1959 bond to build the high school, a seemingly-gleeful Simley drove a bulldozer at a September 1959 groundbreaking ceremony, and the school opened (mostly) in 1960. Simley retired again, but continued to support the school with a $1,000 gift to help build the north wing of the old high school building in 1962. After voters passed a 1966 referendum to build an addition onto the west side of Simley -- what would become the pool -- Simley even featured the artist's rendering and a poem he had written in 1946 on his Christmas card (which you can see in full here):
(That's a real flex, putting the school named for you on your Christmas card.)
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Simley's name still adorns the high school today, though that almost changed in 1985 -- and prompted the first recorded walk-out in school history.
At a March 26, 1985 meeting of the ISD 199 school board, board members like Walter Ahern discussed what they considered to be an "image problem" for Simley and Inver Grove Heights: no one knew where it was. No one knew who Simley was. It was confused with Sibley all the time. And why had Inver Grove named its school after a South St. Paul figure, anyway?
The reason, a Sun-Current newspaper account noted, was the first superintendent of ISD 199, Karl Dahlager, who broke a 3-3 tie to name the school after Simley. Even that, though, according to assistant superintendent Wally Eklund, was never "cut in stone" -- the board could change it and had floated the idea at least three other times since 1960. In 1985, the board proposed, it would take nothing more than removing the letters from the building and buying new sports uniforms. "Inver Grove High School" appeared to be the popular choice, though others like Atkins have speculated that "Hubert H. Humphrey High School" was an alternative -- suggestive athletic team nicknames accompany that idea, though I can find no documentation to support that claim.
Whatever the case, board chairman Paul Anderson appointed a committee of Ahern, Gordon Waldhauser, and Robert Teichert to explore the issue and report back to the school board by July 1.
Tensions were already high with students, as the board was in the process of approving a tobacco ban at all school-sponsored activity and the elimination of a designated smoking area behind the school, which went into effect in the 1985-86 school year. (37 Simley faculty also wrote in opposition to the change in policy, citing how increased policing of the ban would cut down on their educational time.)
On March 29, Simley students walked out of school.
Unfortunately, because the Simley student newspaper had gone out of print in 1982 and would not be resurrected until 1986, we don't have any student accounts from that day. (That we know of: if you've got information, see below!)
On April 9, Simley student school board representative Brian Frenger presented the board with a petition signed by 159 students who opposed the renaming process. Over a dozen students addressed the school board that night about the name change. A few citizens wrote letters (you can see one at the right).
When the board met again on April 23, Ahern reported that the name change committee had tabled the consideration, adding that they had reached out to the city of Inver Grove Heights (for what, I can only speculate). From there, the issue died -- though retiring superintendent Art Gessner lamented in his June 1985 farewell to the district that "the most depressing of the bad news" from his time in ISD 199 was "that we have failed to market our schools." A reference to the name Simley? Perhaps in part.
The trail goes cold from there, and it's likely that the issue died then. But it's an interesting look at longstanding questions in Inver Grove: where is Simley? Where is Inver Grove Heights? How does a school district "market" itself? Should it?
That, coupled with the student walkout, remains a point of fascination -- it would be another 30+ years, to the best of our records, before Simley students led a mass protest. How did students plan and execute it? What do faculty recall from the day-of? What motivated the students? Did they like being Simley Spartans?
Cory Haala
July 29, 2024
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Were you there? Set the record straight!
If you read this story and thought "Nope, he's got that wrong" or "Oh man, I remember that!", we'd love to hear from you. And now you've got the chance!
To help us out, please attend (or at least share the news about) our Inver Grove Heights Schools Community History Harvest! This is an open-door event at the Simley Performing Arts Center, August 12-14, where community members can bring in memorabilia, clippings, photographs, and more related to Inver Grove Schools.
For information and to attend or contribute (including a virtual option if you can't join in-person), please click this link: https://invergrovehistory.org/isd-199-history-harvest