SerpApi.Org
MANISTEE — Manistee Area Public Schools officially opened its Generations Plaza with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday.
Located along the east wall of Manistee Elementary School, 550 Maple St., the plaza serves as a permanent public tribute to Manistee High School graduates by listing their names along the wall.
"This plaza represents a great deal of pride and represents the community very well," said MAPS superintendent Ron Stoneman. "I see families gathering and I'm seeing the names, but also hearing the stories and memories. That's extremely powerful. Every name up here is a piece of the fabric of this community, and we take great pride in that."
The plaza also contains information about the district's facilities, the school bell from the 1887 Central High School/Woodrow Wilson School and the 1925 keystone salvaged from the old high school building.
"This whole thing came about when Mark Fedder from the (Manistee County Historical) Museum said, 'We've got this big bell,' and Ron said, 'We've got this wall,'" said Brandon Jensen, owner and creative director of Rightside Design Group. "... Through multiple iterations, working with architects and the contractors as part of the bond project to get the plaza set and finalized, ... this took probably three years when it was all said."
Stoneman said the $80,000 project was originally intended to be 100% funded through bond funds, but it ultimately became "a bit of a blend" after those funds were spent.
Fedder led the process of compiling the names of graduates from each class, going back from 2026 to 1879.
"From 2006 on, there was a document with all the students' names on it, so we didn't have to do too much snooping around," he said. "Then from about 1923 to 2005, we used yearbooks. We have most of those yearbooks at the museum and we were able to go through all those yearbooks and type in all the names. Prior to 1923, we relied on various accounts of the Manistee High School graduations from Manistee newspapers, which often listed all of the graduates from their specific year."
People can visit manisteemariners.org/generations to submit an addition or correction.
"When putting this together, we always believed that this would be a living, breathing thing," Fedder said. "And of course, when you're dealing with 14,000 names, there's going to be an error — especially with a lot of Polish names."
Jensen said there is ample space for future graduating classes to be listed on the wall.
"The idea really was about trying to get some place where Manistee graduates and people who have a story of Manistee can come and see where they've been," he said. "This is a living, breathing wall that will just continue on in the future. ... We have a lot of wall. There's 150 years to there; we can easily fit 150 years more.
"Fun fact if you're from Manistee: There's over 900 '-skis' on the wall."
