New Website For All Classes of Twin Lakes High I continue to get requests from people wanting to organize reunions or find ways to get in touch with old friends without having to pay for a service like Classmates.com. To help out with this, I've created my own social networking Website where each graduating class of Twin Lakes High can create their own discussion group, e-mail lists and more. Simply visit: www.TwinLakesHigh.com

This is the main building to Twin Lakes High School, where I attended. The Twin Lakes High School campus spanned several acres and sat on a hill in downtown West Palm Beach. In my senior year, the School Board voted to close it. Years later, they voted to reopen it as an arts school.

Twin Lakes High School
School nearly was torn down but has been transformed
into the Dreyfoos School of the Arts

Home to movie stars, politicians and thousands of community leaders since the early 1900s, this school may be the most famous in all of Florida.

The school's halls rang with history. First known as Central Schools, then later as Palm Beach High, the school survived the Great Depression, witnessed the Atom Bomb, saw South Florida become a metropolis and was the county's focal point during the racial integration of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Named Twin Lakes High right after integration (in the early 1970s), the high school was home to the rich kids of the island of Palm Beach; to the poor kids of downtown West Palm Beach; and to the farm kids of the county's Western Communities.

It had, at the same time, the highest drop-out rate in Florida and the highest number of students being accepted to top schools.

I attended the school during its gravest hour – 1984-85.  That’s when the School Board voted to close the school, tear it down and move the students to other schools. Students last walked through Twin Lakes’ doors in late 1988. Then the school was boarded up.

Years later, though, the School Board changed its mind and after years of renovation, the school reopened in 1997 – this time as an arts magnet school known as the Dreyfoos School of the Arts.

I had the good fortune of visiting the school and was nearly brought to tears as I realized that the school likely would survive yet another 100 years. The school is state of the art and seems to have all the hallmarks that endeared Palm Beach High and Twin Lakes High graduates to their alma mater.

It is something awe-inspiring to behold.

When I visited the school recently (in its latest reincarnation as the Dreyfoos School of the Arts), I took a whole bunch of IPIX 360-degree photos of the campus. When you open these photos (which actually move on their own and look somewhat like a video), you’ll get a true 360-degree feel of various area of the campus.

Please read the directions below, then choose the photos you want to see.

Directions Note 1: Click on any of the links below with your right mouse button. When a menu pops up, choose "save target as" or "save link as." Remember where you have saved it. The photos are saved as an "executable," which means all the photo names have ".exe" at the end. 

Directions Note 2: Find the photo you saved and double-click on it. When the photo opens, it will be "moving." At any time, you can put your mouse pointer on the photo and hold your mouse button down. When you do, simply drag your mouse in any direction and the photo will move in that direction. 

Attn. Mac Users: Unfortunately, these IPIX shots do not work on a Macintosh. 

Don’t Forget: Don’t forget to right-click on the link to save it to your hard drive.
 

• In Front of Arches (01front.exe, 384KB) – (Don't forget to read directions above.) In this shot, you can see the arches, then spin around and see the new entertainment complex that has been built across the street from the school.
• On Other Side of Arches (02front.exe, 344KB) – This shot was taken just after walking through the arches. You get a good view of the lawn.
• Under Flag Pole (03flag.exe, 364KB) – You get a great shot of the school’s main building, as well as the front lawn.
• Old “000” Building Stairs (04stairs.exe, 364KB) – The school was known for its grand staircases. In the main building, known as the old “000” building, the stairs are now “protected” and off-limits to students. In this photo, you can see a nice shot of these stairs.
• Halfway Up “000” Building Stairs (05stairs2.exe, 292 KB) – In this shot, I walked haflway up the stairs so you can reminisce of all the times you took these stairs yourself.
• “New” Debate Room (06debate.exe, 376KB) – For two decades, the school was known for having the best debate team in the country. In this shot, you can see the new debate room, now located in the old “100” building.
• Inside Where The Cafeteria Once Was (07icafe.exe, 408 KB) – The cafeteria no longer exists. The cafeteria now is nothing more than a giant storage area. In this shot, if you spin the photo around and look for the sunlight coming through a door, that will be the old entrance.
• Outside “Old” Cafeteria (08ocafe.exe, 436KB) – This shot opens with the camera focused on the “old” entrance to what used to be the cafeteria. When the camera spins around, you’ll be able to see just how much the campus has changed.
• Old Fountain (10fount.exe, 404KB) – Okay, this is probably the hardest shot to understand. The photo starts with the camera aimed at the old water fountain. Well, anyhow, it still doesn’t have water in it. When the photo spins around, you’ll get an idea for just how much the center part of the campus has changed.
• “Old” 300 Building Stairs (11stairs.exe, 348KB) – Here is another shot of one of the school’s famous staircases.
• Most of Gardenia Street Now Gone (12street.exe, 384KB) – Remember how you could drive up Gardenia Street, which ran between the “300” Building and the “700” Building? Well, only a part of the street now exists. The rest has been covered over with grass and walkways, as you’ll see in this photo.
• Inside “700” Building (13ojou.exe, 336KB) – Initially the home of Palm Beach Community College and later home to the nation’s top-ranked high school debate team and one of the nation’s best school newspapers, the “700” building has seen much history. In this shot, you can see the opening hallway, including the grand suspension door that once held all the school’s new books.
• Inside Jay Linksman’s old “700” Room (14ijou.exe, 352KB) – This shot has personal significance for me. This is the room where Jay Linksman used to teach English and journalism classes. My journalism career began in this classroom. I took this shot where Mr. Linksman’s desk once was.
• Outside “700” Building (15joubld.exe, 396KB) – This is a nice outside shot of the “700” Building.
• Outside Glenda Thompson’s “200” Room (16thomp.exe, 324KB) – This is a shot in the hallway outside where Glenda Thompson used to teach (Room 222, I believe it used to be).
• Outside Old Photo Lab (17photo.exe, 348KB) – In the early 1900s, part of the bottom floor of the 200 building served as the cafeteria for elementary school students. In the 1970s and 1980s, the area was turned into a photo lab. I took this shot standing in the hallway, with the camera first pointed at the door to the old photo lab. (It’s now simply a classroom.)
• Gymnasium (18gym.exe, 384KB) – Remember the pep rallies that used to be held in the gym? Well, I took this shot by standing in the area where the freshman bleachers once were located.
• Auditorium (19audi.exe, 432KB) – The auditorium has been renovated and looks, well, quite spectacular.

I was a member of the Class of 1985, which graduated thinking that in a few years, the school would be torn down.

After all, it was on that fateful night in 1984, with more than 200 parents in the audience, with students sitting in their cars outside the jammed building, the Palm Beach County School Board voted 4-3 to close Twin Lakes.

I remember I had trouble walking and breathing when the gavel came down on the vote. 

I was just a senior in high school at the time, but I knew what had just happened would stay with me forever. 

That night, I went home and began writing a short story about the school. I wrote the entire story in a single night, finishing it when the sun came up. You can read the story, unedited, here: 

I wasn't the only one the school's closing would affect.

At the Class of 1985's 10-year reunion, I spoke to classmate after classmate who told me stories of going back to the closed school and walking around, sitting and mingling with the ghosts. They told me of holding back tears as they stared into cracked windows and walked up stairs decades old. 

One student told me of he and another's adventure one night into the closed, boarded-up school. They pried off a piece of plywood over a window, snuck in to their favorite classroom and took some of the photos hanging on the wall -- photos that had special meaning to them. 

I took 25 of the best photos from my reunion and have placed them online. 

I also took a copy of the rather voluminous brochure given at the reunion and placed it online in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. To view the brochure, as well as get instructions on how PDF works (it's easy), go to: 

At the reunion, one of my fellow classmates, Jay Bluemke, now a filmmaker and multimedia expert in Los Angeles, debuted a short film about the Class of 1985. The highlight of the film is the potpourri of clips of students and teachers simply reminiscing. 

When the film was over, my fellow classmates -- now with jobs and families -- wiped tears from their eyes as we all stood and gave Jay a standing ovation. You could see the tears welling up in his eyes at the response to his labor of love. (By the way, Jay is now writing a movie script about the original fight in 1984-85 to save the school.)

His film made me think of the very first short story I wrote. I began writing it an hour after the School Board voted to close the school. I cried the entire night as I scribbled on a spiral-bound notebook, and I finished the story just as the sun rose. I still have the short story. 

Too many people today don't realize how special something is until they lose it. But even as a teenager, I knew how special Twin Lakes High School was. And so did many of my classmates. That how much magic it wielded on all of us. 

The Alma Mater we used to sing at Twin Lakes captures a bit of that magic: