Eastern High School Celebrating 75th Anniversary

During the 2025-2026 school year, Eastern High School will celebrate its 75th anniversary, a feat that will likely go mostly unremarked among the young people who attend. They won’t think about the many pairs of shoes that have walked the halls before theirs, or the many bodies that have sat in the same classrooms in which they sit. They won’t realize how many marriages, friendships and successful careers were launched within the walls of the school. Most of us need a little experience under our belts to fully appreciate the people who have come before us, and to see our place in the long cycle of history.

The construction of Eastern High School in Middletown was completed in 1950, but prior to that, the land on which the school sits belonged to several families who sold plots, totaling some 56 acres, to the board of education for the creation of the school. Once construction began, there were the usual delays, but there was also a strike by the operating engineers union that factored into when the school would open. Though the opening was delayed, close to 400 students “attended” Eastern prior to the completion of the building, but their school was in the form of Quonset hut-type structures.

Students were excited to attend Eastern High School, which is evident in the first issue of the school’s newspaper, The Eagle, which came out in October 1950 and noted that Eastern was “the first school in Jefferson County to be a three-story building.” At a cost of $1,637,000, the school had its own sewage disposal plant located in a wooded area nearby. Like many high schools of its time, it housed seventh- through twelfth-graders.

Virginia Walker, age 86 and a volunteer at the Historic Middletown Museum on Main Street, was a member of the first class that attended Eastern High School in its new building as a seventh-grader, graduating in 1956. Her childhood home was at 11505 Main Street, the house that is now the site of The Prickly Pear Boutique. She, her siblings, and their friends who lived nearby would walk to Eastern each morning. After school, Walker worked as a soda jerk at an apothecary that was located in what is now the First Baptist Church parking lot. She recalls pep rallies that took place every Friday afternoon before the school’s football players would get on the bus to head to their games. It was, in many ways, a different time, when life was slower and much less complicated.

Given the explosion of stores and traffic on Shelbyville Road in Middletown, it is hard to imagine a time when U.S. Highway 60 was a two-lane road surrounded by farms and trees, but Eastern High School was, in many ways, what propelled population growth in the area during the 1950s and beyond. Eastern pulled students from St. Matthews and Jeffersontown, so it wasn’t too long before Woodland Hills, the subdivision that backs up to the high school, began development, as more families wanted to live closer. Walker remembers when Eastgate Shopping Center, the site of Kroger, was a turkey farm, and the Willow Wood neighborhood, at the intersection of Shelbyville Road and Blankenbaker Parkway, was a chicken farm.

Just as Middletown itself has changed over the years, so has Eastern High School, and sometimes one just has to chuckle at how different the world is now. An article in the archives at the Historic Middletown Museum from July 17, 1991, in The New Voice, was titled “Eastern teachers, students jump into the computer age.” At that time, Eastern was one of only five schools in the nation to be selected for the Exhibitions of Mastery program, which was a collaboration between IBM and Brown University that helped the school install a computer network. Now, Eastern students walk around with tiny computers in their hands.

Business and technology programs continue to offer Eastern’s students a leg up in their professional lives once they leave the school. In fact, many of the people who now work in Louisville’s information technology field were once students at Eastern High School. Students have had access to all kinds of technology classes, including computer repair, network security, graphic design, cinematography, computer science, and web design.

To highlight and celebrate Eastern High School and its changes over time, the Eastern alumni association was created. As with any nonprofit organization, it took time to lay the foundation, but it went public in 2023. Mike Horan, an alum and current teacher at Eastern, has been association president for two years. “Our main goal so far has been to connect Eastern alumni to each other and back to the school,” Horan says. “We’ve hosted several alumni open-house events, alumni games during football and basketball season, and supported reunions with school tours.” The alumni association, which has a Facebook presence, is working on the events to celebrate the school’s 75th anniversary.

The alumni association strives to commemorate some of the well-known people who have walked through the halls of Eastern. While the most famous of these may be Ned Beatty, a Hollywood actor from movies like “Deliverance”, “Superman” and “Toy Story 3”, there are others. “We have a new wall at Eastern that celebrates individual athletic achievements like earning an individual state championship, playing a sport in a major professional league, or being named the top player in a sport,” Horan says. “It is hard not to notice folks like Simidele Adeagbo and Susie [Shields] White, who were both Olympians – the latter winning a medal while still a student at Eastern. Todd Wellemeyer won a World Series, Myron Pryor won a Super Bowl, and Felton Spencer had a long NBA career.”

Whether students go on to do big things or not, high school is a formative time and can shape them into the adults they become. Horan himself loved the Eastern vibe and has made it his permanent home. “I fell in love with the Eastern community even before I was a student,” he says. “Growing up as a teacher’s kid, we were always at games and events. When I got to Eastern, I got to know and build relationships with so many people whose lives were different from mine. One of the reasons I decided to teach and coach was that, other than my parents, the most impactful people in my life were teachers and coaches.”

Eastern’s reach extends far beyond Middletown and into the state. The school’s new principal, Chris Collins, says “I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, and we heard over and over, whether it was sports or academics, about Eastern High School. It stood out as a model community school and so well-connected to the city of Middletown.”

Horan seconds Eastern’s importance as a school that brings together a unique swathe of the community, saying “Eastern is and has been a genuinely diverse community across many different criteria, but also a place that focuses on excellence from all. That makes our community so much richer and is really an important part of the educational process.”