‘You are the world to me’: Pinellas High School family gathers for reunion gala

Algie Rembert traveled 8,000 miles to attend his high school reunion.

The journey from Nairobi, Kenya, was all to spend a Saturday night in a school gymnasium in Clearwater. Worth it, Rembert said.

For Rembert and the more than 300 former Pinellas High School students, teachers and families in the gymnasium, the reunion symbolized a reclaiming of their high school and its history.

The all-Black school closed in 1968, just one year after Rembert’s graduation, when desegregation efforts transferred all the students to schools with their white peers, leaving no students at Pinellas High.

“We were on the very cusp of integration, so this school just means so much to us socially, academically, in every aspect,” Rembert said.

Even after he moved across the world and the school ceased to exist, Rembert relied on lessons learned at Pinellas High to navigate life. From preparing him to enter the newly desegregated world to inspiring a love of humanitarianism that led him to work at an orphanage in Kenya, Pinellas High’s influence lasted long after its final bell rang.

In the 55 years since it closed, the Pinellas High building has been home to a series of schools. Most recently, Clearwater Intermediate occupied it.

When Pinellas High alumni heard Clearwater Intermediate planned to expand to high school grades, they lobbied the school board to rename the school Pinellas High Innovation in honor of their alma mater.

As the Pinellas High name returned home to the building at 1220 Palmetto St. in Clearwater, so did the students.

Alumni dressed in suits and gowns poured into their old gymnasium for the Pinellas High School Reunion Gala on Saturday — many choosing to don their alma mater’s colors of maroon and gold. While the former students kept in close touch and hosted gatherings after the school’s closure, they had rarely been able to plan events on school property.

“It’s time that we stopped having to go outside of the parameters into places like hotels to come together when we got a facility right in the community that was once our home,” said Isay Gulley, a 1965 graduate and the chairperson of the gala. “We lost our alma mater when the integration took place and that was hurtful when the name went away.”

Gulley said she had hoped integration would bring more students and resources to the school but, instead, all of its existing resources were divided up and sent to other communities.

“Only thing we were asking for during the integration process was equality and equity. We never said to get rid of our schools to bring about justice,” Gulley said. “We wanted the teachers to have better pay. We wanted to have new books and things like the other schools and stop getting passed down books with kids’ names already in them, pages torn out. But we didn’t need to lose our school.”

For many, like 1963 graduate Lola Rutledge, Saturday marked their first time in the building since graduating. Rutledge was voted Miss Pinellas High School as part of homecoming festivities in 1963 — but Saturday felt like her true homecoming.

“We never thought we’d ever be able to come together in this building,” Rutledge said. “This school made us feel like we had something, like we were important.”

Throughout the night, alumni lamented the loss of the school marching band — a major point of pride and a cornerstone of Pinellas High’s identity. Over and over again they told the story of the time the band, normally one of the final acts, got moved to the front of a Clearwater parade. After the Marching Panthers passed, the story goes, nearly everyone went home.

Speeches made during the gala recognized former students, teachers and staff for their contribution to the school’s history. Alumni lit candles in honor of the members of the “Pinellas High family” who died before seeing the building renamed.

A speech by 1967 graduate Joyce Russell celebrated Pinellas High’s history and highlighted prominent alumni, such as Tony-nominated choreographer Donald Byrd and Judge Joseph Hatchett, the first Black Florida Supreme Court justice. A federal courthouse in Tallahassee is being named after Hatchett on June 30.

Pinellas High Innovation Principal Ryan Green supported the renaming effort. He changed the marquee outside the school Saturday to read “Welcome Home Pinellas High Families.”

Green explained during a speech what the transition from Clearwater Intermediate to Pinellas High Innovation will entail. Over the next two years, it will add 11th and 12th grades, graduating its first class of seniors in 2026. The school will undergo renovations to accommodate more students, but Green said Pinellas High staples such as maroon and gold decor and the black panther mascot will remain.

“What once was is now again,” Green said.

After the speeches, chatter filled the room as guests sat at round tables covered in maroon cloths and dug into their dinners. A table to the right of the stage boasted a sign reading “The Pioneers”.

At the table sat Annette Faison, Kellis Glenn, Tommye Green and E.M. Montana — some of the first people to graduate inside the building. Pinellas High relocated to Palmetto Street in 1954 and graduated its first class of 35 students in 1955.

Faison, a 1956 graduate, said she came to celebrate the name change because she wants her grandchildren to understand what it means when she tells them she graduated from Pinellas High.

Glenn, a 1955 graduate, said she loved the school so much she walked through thunderstorms to get to class, never missing a day. She said the Pinellas High teachers taught valuable life lessons she still thinks of daily.

For instance, every time Glenn puts a card in the mail she thinks of English teacher Mrs. Jackson telling students they would not graduate if they put their graduation invitation in the envelope the wrong way.

“We had beautiful, wonderful teachers here at this school,” Glenn said. “They just loved us.”

Former Pinellas High teachers attended the gala, many having kept in touch with their students. Arlington Nunn, who taught business education at the school from 1961 until it closed, remembered parents knowing he was on a low salary as a young Black teacher and inviting him over for dinner.

“At Pinellas High, we looked after each other,” Nunn said.

Pinellas High alumni will continue to look after the students walking the halls of their alma mater by funding a Pinellas High School Alumni Clothes Closet, creating a Pinellas High historical display in the media center and mentoring students.

As alumni flocked from around the world just to dance one more Saturday night away in their high school gym, Rembert reflected on how judges and choreographers, car dealers and consultants, teachers and social workers could all call the same little Clearwater high school home — regardless of whether they lived down the street or, like him, 8,000 miles away.

“It’s like the school song says: ‘Dear old Pinellas High School, you are the world to me’,” Rembert said. “This is a microcosm of the greater world. From here, we all branched out and many of us made major achievements. This was the impetus, the driving force, for so many of us to go forth into the world and make our marks and do it with a great sense of humanitarianism.”