Karen Kinney Norton
A School Like No Other
A School Like No Other Copyright Š 2011 by KKN Publishing LLC, Wichita, Kansas 67226 This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission of the copyright holder. International Standard Book Number: 978-0-9823315-2-1 Library of Congress Control Number: Design and Layout by Jim L. Friesen Printed in the U.S.A by Mennonite Press, Inc., Newton, Kansas Picture on back cover courtesy of Diane Rapp.
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A School Like No Other
Dedicated to Jean, who believed in me and gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. Indeed, as her granddaughter Abby said, she was “the golden thread that held it all together.� Don, Diana, and Kenneth, for their love and support. All of the wonderful people who walked the journey with me. You are the ones who made it special.
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A School Like No Other
Table of Contents Acknowledgements................................................ vii Introduction.......................................................... xi The Beginnings..................................................... 1 Part One: Management Philosophies Space is Space, or Consider the Possibilities..... 17 Collaboration.................................................. 37 Basic Values..................................................... 53 Gratitude and Appreciation........................ 53 Fairness...................................................... 55 Integrity..................................................... 59 Kindness.................................................... 62 Encouragement................................................ 65 Empowerment................................................. 69 Parents Are Partners......................................... 75 Creating a Healthy Environment..................... 79 A School is a Business – Sort of....................... 85 Entrepreneurship............................................. 91 Continuity and Consistency............................ 97 A Sense of Humor........................................... 99 All Grades Are Created Equal.......................... 105 Fiscal Responsibility......................................... 109 Supporting Each Other.................................... 119 Communication.............................................. 121 Excellence........................................................ 127 Lead by Example............................................. 135 Business Planning............................................ 139 Governance...................................................... 145 From Mom-and-Pop to an Institution............. 153 The Bottom Line: Do What’s Right................. 157 v|
A School Like No Other
Part Two: The Evolution of the School Lower School................................................... 161 The Islands................................................. 174 Middle School................................................. 177 Chess Club and Math Contests.................. 190 Upper School................................................... 193 The Athletic Program................................. 198 Booster Club........................................ 204 Sports Facilities..................................... 211 Sports................................................... 230 Band.......................................................... 267 Academic Team Competitions.................... 271 National Honor Society and Student Council................................... 279 Drama........................................................ 283 Visual Arts................................................. 296 Writing and Publications............................ 298 Part Three: Memories and Traditions Accreditation................................................... 305 Floods, Vandalism and Tornadoes.................... 313 When Bad Things Happen to Nice People....... 325 Art on Campus................................................ 331 Criminals, Critters, and Other Little Known Incidents........................................ 337 Some Independent Characters......................... 347 Graduations..................................................... 367 School Identity and School Spirit.................... 375 Traffic Woes..................................................... 385 Dress Code...................................................... 391 A Blue Ribbon School..................................... 395 Epilogue.......................................................... 403 Appendices...................................................... 409 vi |
A School Like No Other
Acknowledgements pon retiring from The Independent School in 2006, I told several people that I had thought about writing the school’s history. I was especially encouraged to do so by the founder of the school, Mrs. Jean Garvey, and by my successor, Ed Walters. Since I had been employed at the school from its inception in 1980 through my retirement in 2006 and was intimately involved in its growth, I knew that mine would be a unique perspective. I also knew that our school was different in many ways and it seemed important to share its traits with others. One of the difficulties I encountered was remembering what happened when, and to whom. Past issues of The Pen, school yearbooks, my own notes, and the recollections related to me by numerous faculty, staff, and friends were invaluable. Thank you to every person who shared a memory or two with me. Many will find their story somewhere in the book, and the conversations I had with my TIS friends sparked other recollections that had to be mentioned. Some who are reading this history may remember the events differently from what I have written. I have learned that we each remember events based upon how we were involved in them, which could mean that, from someone else’s perspective, particular events unfolded differently. I did my best to make sure that my accounts are accurate. I also know that some reading this book will recall events that are not mentioned. I wish I could have written about vii |
A School Like No Other everything, but it was neither realistic nor possible. If I left out your favorite event, write a note about it in the margin of your book, so you won’t forget it. And send me a note about it, too. I might use it in a future publication. The next challenge was a bit more daunting: determining how to organize all of the information. Although a chronological order seemed to make sense, the quantity of available information made that approach impossible. It would have been like driving on a freeway and stopping to describe each exit along the way. After considerable thought, I divided the book into three sections: Management Philosophies, the Evolution of the School, and Memories and Traditions. In this way the story could unfold logically and clearly. Finding clear pictures to enhance and document the story presented another hurdle. Each one had to fit with the text, and I had to gain permission from anyone who could be identified in the photo before I could use it. Thank goodness for the internet! Unfortunately, since I still could not locate a number of the students, I wasn’t able to use many of the provided pictures and had to blur faces in others. Celeste Balog, Dianne Rapp, Linda Amos, Shirley Meissner, Ernie Drowatzky, Kathy Dunlavy, Michelle Bolin, Susie Schainost, and others supplied me with plenty of pictures that were representative of the fun times at TIS. (My children in particular are grateful to this group of people, as they knew if I didn’t find other pictures, many not-so-glamorous pictures of them probably would have appeared in the publication.) I cannot emphasize enough how grateful I am to the many people who read one or several drafts of the publication. Judy Goodpasture, Michelle Bolin, Pam Cornwell, and Shirley Meissner read it at least once, while Jean Garvey, Julie Sheppard, Ann Garvey, Emily Bonavia, Susie Schainost, Teri Bloomer, Celeste Balog, and others read excerpts. Their memories and comments, along with those of Victoria Foth Sherry, who edited the work and smoothed out the rough spots, have helped me create an account that I hope is fun and interesting to read. I didn’t realize indexing a book was such a complicated task until I talked with Susan Hernandez. Once she explained to me the difviii |
A School Like No Other ference between a list of names (which is what I had done in my first book) and a true index, I was ecstatic when she offered to compile the index for me. Her efforts will make the book far more useable to those who read it. I am sincerely thankful for this extraordinary gift. I must mention my inordinate thanks to Mrs. Garvey for placing her trust in this 27-year-old woman to help build her dream. I have long believed that our pairing was one of divine intervention. Her boundless generosity and wisdom during our school years and in writing this book have been profoundly life changing. I can never repay her. So, too, I must mention my husband Don without whom I could not have succeeded. He was a sounding board, a handy-man, a go-fer, a problem solver, a willing participant, and a wise counsel all in one person. I am indeed lucky to be married to him. Finally, I am so grateful my children let me stay at the school throughout their schooling. As they grew older, I asked each of them more than once if they needed me to leave the school so that they could enjoy their years there. I was convinced that the education at TIS was perfect for them, and if my position as the head was causing them problems, I was willing to get out of the way. Thankfully, each time I asked, they both told me they liked having me at the school. They made my journey even that much more special. Each and every person involved with The Independent School, whether a student, family member, teacher, staff, volunteer, or community member, impacted the school. The importance of these individual contributions cannot be emphasized enough. As I began this book, I quickly realized that I could not mention every person. I have chosen to let the story flow, using people’s names as it seemed appropriate. If someone is not named, it is only because I had to stop somewhere. The spirit of every person associated with The Independent School pervades this book, and I am grateful to everyone who shared in the journey.
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A School Like No Other
Introduction ne warm spring day, the breeze danced across the T-ball fields as parents and their five-year-old children slowly gathered for their first practice. A few of the parents greeted each other as their children shyly clung to their sides. Several children knew each other and played tag, others tentatively eyed their future teammates, and one or two sat in the grass picking dandelions and watching ants. Soon the coaches arrived at each field and called their teams together. The coaches knew, even before they saw their teams, that in each group of eighteen or twenty children there would be a few with a natural ability for baseball, plus a few who would be challenged by the game. However, the majority had the capacity to become pretty good players if they were coached and encouraged. The coaches knew their job was to challenge their best players while teaching the rest how to compete with the best. If they did their job right, all the players would perform at a high level. Throughout the summer, the coaches worked with their charges as they practiced throwing, catching, and batting, and they asked the parents to work with their children between games. The coaches corrected and encouraged, instructed and cheered, as the young students absorbed as much as they could. Those students for whom baseball was a challenge improved; the students for whom baseball was new but who possessed some athletic ability, however, made xi |
A School Like No Other the greatest gains. When the season was over, the coaches asked students and parents to practice during the off-season so that the next season would be better. This scene played itself out over and over, every year. The coaches and a few of the students on the team would change, but by and large the process and the personnel remained the same. The coaches would continue to challenge the students to be the best they could be, and the students would respond. Soon the gap between that original group of “best” players and the rest of the students shrank, often until there was no gap at all. By the time these students were seniors in high school, they won awards, gained acceptance at top schools in the nation, and outperformed their friends who did not enjoy the advantage of such positive coaching. This sports story is analogous in many ways to the story of The Independent School. Independent routinely enrolls a number of very bright students, and although most are not destined to become nuclear physicists, each one is very capable. Just as a good coach can transform a collection of passionate athletes into an extraordinary team, so it is with the teachers and students at The Independent School. As Dr. Marc Quillen, an Independent parent and local neuropsychologist, once said, “Average to above-average students, when exposed to a superior curriculum and topnotch teaching, frequently become gifted students.” That trend became apparent after Independent students began participating in local and national competitions such as the Duke Talent Search and the Kansas Association of the Teachers of Math (KATM) contests. Suddenly, young people who had not been identified as gifted when they were in Lower School were performing at that level. The school team was coming into its own, ready to garner awards and honors. This is the story of that little school…a school like no other.
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A School Like No Other
The Beginnings he story of The Independent School really starts long before the doors officially opened. Jean Kindel Garvey, the school’s founder, and Willard Garvey were both born and raised in Wichita, Kansas. Mr. Garvey was one of four children born to Ray and Olive Garvey, while Mrs. Garvey was the daughter of George and Leota Kindel. They both attended public schools in Wichita, he graduating from East High and she from North. They began dating after Mr. Garvey returned from World War II. The first date was in December and he began to talk about marriage while on their second date. They were married just over three months later in April. Mr. Garvey learned how to operate a business by watching and listening to his father, Ray Garvey. He found that he liked starting businesses and especially loved construction, which explains the many properties he developed in Wichita and around the world. Mrs. Garvey had worked at Boeing for four years during the war, and after the wedding she gave active support to her husband, learning about business by listening to the many fascinating people that surrounded the Garveys on a daily basis.1 1 Mrs. Garvey explained that her mother-in-law, Olive Garvey, took over and successfully ran her husband’s many businesses for thirty years after his passing. She was able to do so because she had paid attention to and listened to all of the business discussions that occurred in her home. Mrs. Garvey learned from her mother-in-law, and from her own mother, the power of listening.
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A School Like No Other A portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Garvey hangs outside the business office.
After they started their family, they enrolled their children at the local public school. One day their second son, Jim, came home from school and told his mother that when he tried to read, he was simply guessing what the words were. In those days, the newest fad in teaching reading involved memorizing sight words. Mrs. Garvey knew that the best way to learn to read was through phonics, so she tried to get involved with her children’s classroom instruction. As her youngest daughter, Mary Garvey Theroux, explained, “She was told that parents need to leave the education of their children to the professional educators; parents don’t know anything about it and should stay out.” It was then, according to Mary, that the Garveys began to explore private schools as a result of her mother’s “thwarted efforts to improve public education, not any particular predilection to private education.” In 1958, the Garveys moved their children to the small, privatelyfunded Christopher Rankin School, founded by Mrs. Rankin in memory of her son. The school met at that time in an apartment located at the Institute of Logopedics on Twenty-first Street. Mrs. Rankin’s purpose was to provide a classical education for students who were not being challenged in the public schools. Within a few months the school split, with some students going with Mrs. Rankin to the west side of town and the others remaining on the east side. The east-side school became The Independent Day School, housed in a building in an open field north of Thirteenth 2|
A School Like No Other Street on Governeour, across from what is now Coleman Middle School. Jim Garvey recalled that initially the school could only be accessed by a one-lane dirt road that became very difficult to use when it was raining. Since there was only one lane, students and teachers would stand outside during arrival and dismissal, raising and lowering signal flags for the drivers to know when it was their turn to drive into or away from the school. The Independent Day School lasted until 1963, when a group of families including the Garveys, Loves, McEwens, Ritchies, and Brunsons came together to start Wichita Collegiate School. Mrs. Garvey served on the Wichita Collegiate School board until 1977. When her term ended, she began a three-year quest to improve the schools in USD 259, Wichita’s public school district. In speaking with her numerous friends and acquaintances about their children’s and grandchildren’s experiences in various classrooms around the city, she became concerned about the number of discouraged students, teachers, and parents. She attended numerous school board meetings where she met “throngs of unhappy parents and teachers wanting traditional schools.” As chair of the USD 259 Committee for Community Schools, she helped establish Wichita’s first two community schools, one of which was Horace Mann Middle School. Yet her appeals for a stronger curriculum and more fiscal accountability often fell on deaf ears. Convinced that neither the public nor the private schools in Wichita were serving the average family, she decided to start her own school despite the fact that her own children, now grown, would not be able to partake of its advantages. Mrs. Garvey had some very specific ideas about what she wanted to see in her school. First, she wanted it to be modestly priced and affordable for families of average income. That meant, of course, that it would have to have modest facilities. She wanted the teaching to be flexible, recognizing that children learn in Don Wright, the first different ways (a point she stressed quite some Director of the school. 3|
A School Like No Other time before neurological research regarding learning differences had impacted educational practices). She wanted the curriculum to be challenging and exciting, because students, when exposed to interesting and challenging information, respond positively. Encouragement and love, which create happy and secure children, were imperative. Finally, she expected the teachers to have an entrepreneurial spirit, understanding the importance of fiscal responsibility. She hoped that some day an entrepreneurial teacher or parent might be inspired to emulate, or perhaps even franchise, the concept. Having outlined the essentials, her next step was to find someone who could help her put together a plan. A friend recommended that she talk to Don Wright, a former assistant principal and coach with experience in real estate. After her conversation with him, she concluded that Mr. Wright would be the ideal person to help her traverse the many rules and regulations involved in procuring a facility. With the help of the accountants and attorneys at the family firm, Garvey Industries, The Independent School was incorporated as a nonprofit entity. The school advisors immediately applied for 501(c)3 status. Although there were no guarantees that the school’s nonprofit status would be approved, Mrs. Garvey proceeded on the assumption that it would, and nonprofit status was officially achieved early in the fall of 1980. Mrs. Garvey and Mr. Wright contacted Jerri Stucky and asked her to be the principal of the school. An enthusiastic special education teacher with a master’s degree in Educational Administration, Mrs. Stucky was anxious to participate. Although she lived in Newton with her husband and two children, she was excited about the school’s potential. She discovered fairly early on, however, that the Newton school district would not let her break her contract for the 1980-81 school year. She became a consultant instead, hoping to move to the new school by the summer of 1981. When Dr. Kenneth Gleason, Professor of Educational Administration at Wichita State University (and also my master’s advisor), contacted me about helping to start the new school, I did not realize my good fortune at first. In fact, my initial reaction was one 4|
A School Like No Other of uncertainty. At the time I had a nice teaching job at Wichita Collegiate School, but I was starting to realize that I would not be content forever in the classroom. I had just received my administrative degree and, like Mrs. Stucky, I was anxious to use it. I found the prospect of working at a brand new school exciting, albeit scary. My first step was to interview with Mrs. Garvey. We arranged to meet in the Parklane office of Homeowner’s Trust,2 one of Mr. Garvey’s grassroots organizations. As I waited for Mrs. Garvey to arrive, I wondered what she would be like. An olive-green Mercedes rounded the corner and a beautiful woman in a mustard yellow suit with pencil skirt and belted jacket walked through the door. She smiled graciously at me, and we proceeded to talk about her vision. I noticed that she smiled briefly when I told her that I had been employed at Collegiate. I did not realize that her term on the Wichita Collegiate Board of Trustees had expired the spring before I began teaching there, and as a result she knew that I had been trained with what she considered the right perspective. By the time I left, I was intrigued by the possibilities at Independent and knew the job was something my husband Don and I would have to consider. By late June 1980, we understood that this was truly the opportunity of a lifetime. Although I felt as if I were jumping off a cliff at the Grand Canyon, I could see little downside to the decision. The only drawback was that I would not immediately have an administrative position, since Mrs. Stucky had already been hired as the principal. Instead, I was offered a teaching position, which meant I had to be sure I was ready to make a lateral move. After vacationing in Colorado over the July 4 holiday, I accepted the position in the hopes that it would lead to something great. When I let Mr. Randall Storms, Headmaster at Wichita Collegiate 2 Homeowner’s Trust (HOT) was created by Mr. Garvey to be a watchdog for governmental spending and waste. It is largely credited with leading the campaign to repeal the intangibles tax in Sedgwick County, among other things. The intangibles tax was levied on interest and dividends earned by individuals, and the Homeowner’s Trust felt it was an egregious tax, since individuals already paid federal and state taxes on those earnings.
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A School Like No Other School, know of my decision, I told him that I hoped he could understand that the move would be a good one for me. I will never forget his reply: “It makes a whale of a difference from which side of the desk one is looking.” Once the decision was made, however, there was no time for second thoughts. We had only a few short weeks to get ready for school. In the fall of 1980, the school, located in a retrofitted nursing home, opened its doors to eight students enrolled in grades K-9. By the end of that school year enrollment had grown to twenty-five. Mr. Wright and Mrs. Stucky both opted to pursue other interests, and I was handed the reins to the school. We cut back to grades K-6, yet by September we had sixty-nine students enrolled for the 198182 school year, nearly tripling the size of the school in a single year. Three years later, with 146 students crammed into 5,000 square feet, it was apparent that we needed a new facility. An extensive search left us with only one option: build. In fall 1984 Mr. Garvey and his architect, Lawrence Wells, began plans for a new building at 8301 East Douglas. We moved right before school began in fall 1985. Two other programs – Creativity Place (later called Discovery Place)
Students play basketball in the driveway at 937 S. Bluffview.
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A School Like No Other and Wichita Montessori – moved into the building with us to share the extra space. Within a few years parents began pushing for a second class in every grade, but the 8301 East Douglas building could not accommodate any expansion if the other two programs were to remain. Because these programs were important to the school, Mr. and Mrs. Garvey added a new building so that they could remain on the campus while The Independent School expanded to two classrooms at every grade level. That same year, the Wichita Swim Club also relocated to the south side of the school property. Once we had two classes for every grade, Mrs. Garvey and I were pretty content with our little school. But Mr. Garvey had other ideas – he was pushing for a K-12 school. In addition, our parents were begging us to add a true middle school, as most of them were not happy with the available options. So in 1991 Mr. Garvey added a middle school wing to the west side of the original building. The lower level contained six classrooms and an office, while the upper level consisted of one large room. Doors were cut into the west gymnasium wall for access. I hired Susan Schainost to lead the Middle School, which at that time consisted of twenty-three lively sixth-grade students. Also during that school year, the Garveys donated their tennis court and pool building to the school.
Excavation begins for the Upper School, which will be attached to the Discovery Place/Wichita Montessori building.
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A School Like No Other They retained ownership of the land between the Lower School and their home, but they believed that Independent could use the building for several purposes, including a science center. In 1992, a storage area was added onto the north side of the gymnasium, providing much-needed relief for our already overcrowded classrooms. (Mr. Garvey was less than enthusiastic about providing storage space, since he knew it would eventually become filled with items no one wanted. Sure enough, soon we were holding storage room “cleaning days� to make certain that the area would stay organized. Sometimes we even rented a dumpster for all the trash.) The storage area also served as a convenient pathway for teachers and students to get to the second floor of the west wing without having to descend the stairs. Mr. Garvey watched our ever-increasing enrollment numbers (the Middle School grew from twenty-three sixth-graders in 1991 to seventy-nine sixth- to eighth-graders in 1993-94) and began talking about adding another building. Although Mrs. Garvey and I resisted adding the Upper School, Mr. Garvey believed that it was important to offer a complete K-12 school, and announced that he was prepared to build us another building. He hired Martin Hanney to create the plans for a new facility that would include another gymnasium, an auditorium, a large lunchroom, three science rooms, a band room, a library, and numerous classrooms. The Upper School building was to be attached to the Discovery Place-Montessori building, which created some logistical challenges. First, the entire east side of the building had to be excavated, leaving a twenty-foot hole that curious young children must walk past every day. The large machines and cranes fascinated the little ones, and more than one rainy day was spent watching the machinery move the earth. Groundbreaking took place in May 1993, and in 1994 a total of 132 Middle School and seventeen ninth-grade students moved into the new building, which at 63,000 square feet doubled the size of the campus. Virginia McCracken, who first served as the Montessori fourth- and fifth-grade teacher and then as the Middle School Latin teacher, became the new Head of the 8|
A School Like No Other Upper School. Mrs. McCracken was the only person on staff with high school experience, and she knew the ins and outs of college counseling, testing, credits, and activities. A few components of the Upper School building remained unfinished when we moved in. For example, the library was not yet completed and the bookshelves had not been installed. A picture from the 1995 yearbook shows four students installing clips and shelves so that books (that we did not yet have) could fill the library. The gym floor was unfinished, there were neither seats nor basketball goals in the gymnasium, and it would be a year or two before we had auditorium seats and a curtain for the stage. The kitchen was not finished, either. The lunch vendor, Guckenheimer, tried to ready the kitchen for inspections, but the non-slip floor was not yet in place and none of the equipment had been installed. One of Mr. Garvey’s workmen eventually put down an epoxy floor covering laced with sand, which was a fraction of the cost of the floor recommended by the architect. Although those issues caused a great deal of stress in my life, they were just minor details in the scheme of things. In early September, the school hired the Independent School Management Association of Wilmington, Delaware, to perform an evaluation of the school. During that time the wood floor was being installed and the visiting consultant helped me through some tense negotiations with the contractor, who was having quite a spat with Mr. Garvey. The contractor would not lay the floor without a down payment; Mr. Garvey wanted to see part of the floor before paying any money. Eventually, Mr. Garvey agreed to a smaller down payment, and the floor was installed before the end of September. Since Mr. Garvey refused to talk to the installer, I was the one delivering messages and checks. This experience confirmed for me that I am definitely a collaborator, not a fighter. (The consultant, by the way, was quite impressed with our school and gave us high marks.) By the end of the school year, the seats in the auditorium had been installed and the wood floor in the gym was completed. The kitchen was fully functioning and classes were filling up rapidly. In 9|
A School Like No Other
The Language Arts building, 1997, contained classrooms both upstairs and downstairs. In order to fit the building on the site and maximize the classroom sizes, no inside stairway was built. (Photo courtesy of Dianne Rapp.)
Groundbreaking for the Middle School, 1999. (Photo courtesy of Dianne Rapp.)
The construction of the Middle School gymnasium. (Photo courtesy of Dianne Rapp.)
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A School Like No Other Sara Schainost helps move equipment to the Middle School building. (Photo courtesy of Dianne Rapp.)
The last parcel of land is slowly turned into the track and soccer field, 2001. (Photo courtesy of Dianne Rapp.)
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A School Like No Other 1997, with both programs expanding more quickly than expected, another seven-classroom building was constructed. We told ourselves that this building would be the last one we would ever need – but of course, we said the same thing after each building was finished. In 1998, the first class of sixteen students graduated from the Upper School. From 1994 to 2000, the Middle School and Upper School shared the Upper School building, with the Middle School primarily utilizing the upstairs classrooms and the Upper School utilizing the lower level classrooms. Even with the addition of the 1997 building, it became apparent that we would soon run out of space since both programs were growing quickly. In order to have a viable Upper School, we needed to enroll at least 180 Middle School students, which was not possible in the shared facility. By 1999, we desperately needed new Middle School quarters since our classrooms were bursting at the seams. The building was so crowded that a few Upper School classes took place in a closet at the end of the hall, with room for several students and a teacher. Because the only remaining plot of land was the small parking lot for the Wichita Swim Club, Mr. Garvey chose to construct a three-story building complete with a gymnasium and lunchroom. The building officially opened in May 2000, which gave Mrs. Schainost and her staff time to work out the kinks before the next school year began. As part of his Eagle Scout project, one of our students, Matt Cohlmia, made all the arrangements and recruited the volunteers to move the Middle School’s equipment into the building. It was a glorious day when each program finally had its own building, designed specifically for that particular age group. At that point, we knew that Mr. Garvey could not add any more buildings, since we were completely out of land. In the summer of 2001, Mr. Garvey finalized the plans for the school track shortly before he was taken ill. Construction on the track began while he was in the hospital. While he was convalescing that summer, one of his greatest pleasures was to watch the construction of the track as it took place in his front yard. The track 12 |
A School Like No Other was completed during the 2001-02 school year, with the infield planted with grass so that it could double as a soccer field. Over the course of the year Mr. Garvey’s health improved, and he was able to watch with pride how the facilities he built influenced the lives of some of Wichita’s finest students. Sadly, Mr. Garvey, a great friend of The Independent School, passed away on July 25, 2002. In 2005, The Independent School was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a Blue Ribbon School, an acknowledgement that it was one of the top schools in the nation. What had begun with an idea and eight students in a former nursing home had grown to a burgeoning school of 780 students that had achieved national recognition. Those of us involved from the very beginning never dreamed that The Independent School would be so successful.
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