Maryland high school students become oral historians

CUMBERLAND, Md. —  There are jewels in the dust heap of history, and students at Allegany High School know how to find them.

For the sixth consecutive year, students at Allegany have produced a book of 20th century history as seen through the eyes of local people. The series documents wars, industrial growth and the culture of what was once Maryland’s second-largest city.

This year’s 136-page softcover volume, “Prime Time,” sells for $18.95. It covers the 1950s, when Cumberland’s prosperity peaked and a local company built one of the nation’s first cable television systems.

Editor Matthew Poland, a senior who worked on the last three volumes, said his interviews with older residents had taught him much about his hometown. “I feel like I’ve gained a sense of the history of this place. Everything has a story. Every building, every person has a story,” he said.

The books are products of a social studies seminar run by teachers Dan Whetzel and Brian White. The project, winner of numerous awards, is among the best pre-collegiate oral history programs in the country, said Glenn Whitman, author of the forthcoming book “Dialogue With the Past: Engaging Students and Meeting Standards Through Oral History.”

“These kids are doing the work of professional oral historians,” he said. Whitman is chairman of the history department at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac. “The reality is, without students like Dan’s and Brian’s, millions of stories would be lost.”

The story of the Potomac Valley Television Co. began when Cumberland jeweler Lee Marple placed an antenna atop nearby Irons Mountain to improve snowy TV reception. According to the book, traffic jams ensued as people flocked to the ridge top to watch TV at a snack bar Marple opened nearby.

That prompted another entrepreneur, J. Holland Rannells, and his son-in-law, Buford Saville, to erect their own antenna and string cable down to the city of 40,000. By 1957, PVTV claimed to have the largest cable system in the United States.

Saville’s 77-year-old widow, Gloria, called the book “wonderful.”

“It’s a human history, and that’s a great thing,” she said as she collected autographs from all 32 students at a book-signing party in the school library.

The program has grown dramatically since its first project, a 20-page book produced by four students about an abandoned silk mill. They interviewed a dozen people and laid out the pages with scissors and tape, Whetzel said. The latest volume, designed on computers, involved 80 interviews and 32 students.

The first three books, printed in lots of 1,000 to 1,200, are sold out. Besides proceeds from book sales, the program has received a total of $3,000 from two private groups and $4,000 from local Vietnam veterans, whose stories will be told in next year’s book.