Saving the GDHS Globe, Saving History
by Vic V. Vizcocho, Jr.
GRADUATES and former students of the now-defunct George Dewey High School (GDHS) are trying to save the “Globe” that sits in front of the old school site in Subic.
“It has been part of our history and traditions,” said Carl Rodela in a message to Subic Bay News from Vidalia, Georgia, USA, “and a huge part of our youth growing up on your wonderful country.”
GDHS shut down when in 1992, after nearly a century of stay, US forces left Subic Naval Base, then the largest US military facility outside the United States.
The former base has been converted into a freeport and the former GDHS site has been leased to various businesses, like restaurants and hotels, most of which didn’t fare well, leaving the place in its current sorry state.
“It saddens us to see it in its current state,” said Rodela, referring to the globe, “we would like to restore it and have it taken care of as part of the rich history.”
“The globe for us represents all that was good and wonderful for us,” said Rodela, “our senior classes would repaint and maintain the globe every year, it was the passing of the torch for all we stood for as admirals and American teens in another country.”
Doug Summers of Napa, California made it a point to visit the former GDHS site in a recent trip to the Philippines, 35 years since attending the school in Subic.
“I remember the laughter, the friendships and the fond memories left behind,” Summers said in his social media account, adding that he was “deeply saddened” by what he saw at GDHS.
What used to be the “globe” that sits in front of the GDHS is now merely a mounted rusty wrecking ball.
Officials of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) which runs the Freeport, especially its Tourism Department under lawyer Ruel John Kabigting, will have to look into the historical value of the GDHS globe.
Former SBMA administrations have allowed the destruction and conversion of historical sites and/or buildings in the former US base, including the Admiral’s Guest House, now a hotel & restaurant operated by the family of a former member of the SBMA board of directors.
The GDHS globe is of interest to former base employees from the local community and elsewhere in the country, including those now residing in the US and elsewhere around the world, who will be having their first ever Grand Reunion on March 16-22, 2014.
The Olongapo City Council has declared the week, and every third week of March yearly, thereafter, former base workers’ week.
