First Class to Be Bused Making Plans for 20th High School Reunion : Rights: Some were optimistic, others were scared. The former classmates say they support integrated education.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. —  When the Class of 1971 began its senior year at West Mecklenburg High School, Sandi Ridout couldn’t understand why some of her best friends had been bused to other schools.

Robert Leak was a new student at West Mecklenburg, and he looked forward to the opportunity. But some of his friends were angry that they had to leave predominantly black West Charlotte High for the unfriendly turf of West Meck, a longtime sports rival that was mostly white.

Following a sweeping school desegregation order from U.S. District Judge James McMillan, West Meck’s Class of 1971 went into the history books as the nation’s first group of high school seniors to be bused for racial balance.

Now they are in their late 30s--with children of their own, jobs, mortgages and car payments.

In October, they will celebrate their 20th class reunion.

In early July, Leak and other former classmates sat on Sandi Ridout’s parents’ back porch. They looked at old yearbooks and talked about a period that changed their lives and the lives of nearly everyone else in North Carolina’s largest city.

On the first day of school, Ridout recalled, she approached a young black student who had just arrived on campus.

“I was thinking about my friends who had been bused to other schools,” she said. “I wanted to make every effort to make them feel at home.”

Her greeting was rebuffed.

“He said, ‘You are so lame,’ ” she recalled.

“When I sit here and look at the yearbooks from 1971 and 1977, I can see why we had to do this,” she said. “I was so naive. . . . It never dawned on me why there were no black cheerleaders at our school.”

Leak’s transfer from West Charlotte to West Mecklenburg was a chance to make positive changes.

“I turned from a ‘C’ student into an ‘A’ student,” he said. “I began seriously thinking about college.” He later graduated from Appalachian State University.

Leak, the only black of the alumni who gathered on this day, recalled some uncomfortable moments with some of his black friends after fights between groups of whites and blacks. As vice president of the student council, he took it upon himself to try to talk to both sides.

“When I’d get on the bus after school, they’d say: ‘Where were you, Robert?’ ” he said.

These fights between racial groups were described in the media as riots, but Leak and the others said the reports were overblown--there were small skirmishes between students, but otherwise integration went peacefully.

Some said busing nearly ruined their last year in high school.

Ritchie West, bused from West Mecklenburg to another predominantly white school, Harding High, quit playing baseball. But “it wasn’t all bad,” he said. “I met a young lady at Harding and I wound up marrying her.”

Anne Teague was disappointed when she learned she would not spend her senior year at West Meck. She was bused to West Charlotte.

“I was pretty scared,” she said. “I had gone to school with the same people for 11 years, and the guy I had been dating for two years stayed at West Meck.”

At her new school, she joined the work-study program, which reduced the time she spent there and the opportunity to make new friends.

She plans to attend West Mecklenburg’s 20th class reunion instead of West Charlotte’s reunion. West will skip Harding’s reunion.

“These were the people I grew up with,” he said. “It’s not just that I spent two years in high school with them. When I got out of the Army, this is where I came back to.”

These members of the Class of ’71 are struggling with the problems of public education as parents now.

Sandi Ridout and Leak concede that they have made moves to avoid particular schools. Leak, who is divorced, said his two daughters live with their mother in another part of Charlotte to attend better schools. Both are bused to school.

Ridout’s oldest daughter, Allison, now 15, was to be bused to an elementary school for kindergarten.

“I decided to go see it with an open mind,” she said. “When I got there the doors were chained shut and winos were hanging around outside. I said, ‘My 5-year-old isn’t coming here.’ ” Allison went to a Catholic school.

The former classmates said they support integrated education.

“I’m glad my kids are growing up with black friends,” said Linda Gable, a member of the Class of ’71 and mother of five.

“We did change the system,” Leak said. “I’m happy that I was involved in this movement. It was a relief that this country finally was moving forward. There was a sense of optimism.

“Now there’s a sense of frustration,” he said. “We need to rekindle the sense of community, to love one another, to treat our fellow man like you want to be treated.”