Robert Merrell Gage

2020 Hall of Fame Inductee

Robert Merrell Gage, class of 1911, a sculptor. Born in 1892 in Topeka, after graduation from Washburn University of Topeka, Gage left Kansas to study sculpture with Gutzom Borglum, who carved the figures on Mount Rushmore, and Robert Henri, both exponents of the “American Theme” in art, in New York and France. When he returned to Topeka, he began his first public commission, the statue of President Abraham Lincoln on the Kansas Capitol grounds. In fact, he executed the likenesses of Lincoln in many stages of the president’s life, and in 1955 Gage starred in a short film, The Face of Lincoln, with that film winning an Academy Award for Best Live action Short Film. His other works include the Pioneer Mother Memorial near the Lincoln statue, the Police Memorial and Veterans’ Fountain in Kansas City, and the History of California frieze in Beverly Hills. Some have called him “the American sculptor.” He died in 1981.

 

Coleman Hawkins

2020 Hall of Fame Inductee

Coleman Hawkins attended THS around 1920, a saxophonist. Born in 1904 in St. Joseph MO, he began studying piano at age 5, cello at age 7 and the tenor saxophone at age 9. By age 14, he was playing saxophone around eastern Kansas, mostly in Kansas City. He performed with the Fletcher Henderson Big Band for 10 years in New York, jamming with jazz greats including Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. He toured Europe and recorded for the Keynote, Savoy, and Apollo labels. He was the leader on what is considered to have been the first ever bebop recording session on Feb. 16, 1944, including Dizzy Gillespie, Don Byas, Clyde Har, Oscar Pettiford, and Max Roach. His hit song, “Body and Soul,” is an outpouring of irregular, double-timed melodies that became one of the most imitated of all jazz solos. He died in 1969. He didn’t graduate from high school but is being awarded an honorary diploma from current THS principal Rebecca Morrisey.

John Scott

2020 Hall of Fame Inductee

Charles Scott Sr., class of 1940, and John Scott, class of 1938, two of the three attorneys who filed the landmark Brown V. Topeka Board of Education case. John and Charles had suspended their law studies when they were called to serve in World War II, but returned to Washburn Law School and upon graduation, joined their father, Elisha Scott, who had been the third African-American to graduate from Washburn Law, to form the law firm of Scott, Scott and Scott. Charles and John Scott, along with Chares Bledsoe, filed Brown V. Topeka, a fight for the educational equality of all children, on Feb. 28, 1951, in the U.S. District Court of Kansas. They had worked to recruit a group of 13 families willing to challenge the school board’s segregated elementary schools in Topeka and recruited expert witnesses to testify about the psychological harm of segregation. The case was unsuccessful in district court, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the district court on May 17, 1954, in the famous, far-reaching decision. John Scott died in 1984 at age 65 and Charles Scott in 1989 at age 67.

Charles Scott Sr.

2020 Hall of Fame Inductee

Charles Scott Sr., class of 1940, and John Scott, class of 1938, two of the three attorneys who filed the landmark Brown V. Topeka Board of Education case. John and Charles had suspended their law studies when they were called to serve in World War II, but returned to Washburn Law School and upon graduation, joined their father, Elisha Scott, who had been the third African-American to graduate from Washburn Law, to form the law firm of Scott, Scott and Scott. Charles and John Scott, along with Chares Bledsoe, filed Brown V. Topeka, a fight for the educational equality of all children, on Feb. 28, 1951, in the U.S. District Court of Kansas. They had worked to recruit a group of 13 families willing to challenge the school board’s segregated elementary schools in Topeka and recruited expert witnesses to testify about the psychological harm of segregation. The case was unsuccessful in district court, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the district court on May 17, 1954, in the famous, far-reaching decision. John Scott died in 1984 at age 65 and Charles Scott in 1989 at age 67.

Gary L. Taylor (THS 1971)

Gary L. Taylor (THS 1971)

2019 Hall of Fame Inductee

Shakespearean scholar.

His activities at Topeka High demonstrated that Gary Taylor’s future lay with “words”: Debate, Pres. NFL at THS, Chief Justice of THS Judicial Council, Model UN, Quill & Scroll, World staff, World editor, and All Time Honor-T. He earned his bachelor’s degree in English Classics at KU, but for his doctorate traveled across “the Pond” to Cambridge University (1988). While in England, Taylor was a joint general editor of The Oxford Shakespeare. During this period he rediscovered a long lost work attributed to Shakespeare that earned the former Trojan international notoriety including a front page story in the New York Times. Dr. Taylor has written numerous books and articles, both scholarly and for the layman, about Elizabethan literature, as well as taught at Oxford, Brandeis University, and the University of Alabama. Presently he is the Dahl and Lottie Pryor Professor of Shakespeare Literature at Florida State University.

David H. Overmyer

David H. Overmyer

2019 Hall of Fame Inductee

Student.

Artist. David Hicks Overmyer (1889-1973) was a Topeka High student, but might not have formally graduated. That was a norm back then. What is indisputable, David Overmyer is the first in a very long line of distinguished artists from Topeka High School. Beginning his art career, he first studied under pioneer Topeka artist George M. Stone, then attended the famed Chicago Art Institute and later the Art Students’ League in New York. Overmyer became well known as a muralist with some of his best examples at Ferrell Library, K-State, and historical murals for the capitol rotunda in Topeka (1951-53). Three important works are found at THS: “Pageant of Old England” in the English Room (1936), untitled Mediterranean seascape in the Faculty Dining Room (1937), and “Pioneers” in the Woodward Library (1939). An Army veteran of WWI, during WWII he was an illustrator for both Boeing and Douglas aircraft companies. Overmyer and noted American artist Maxfield Parrish were friends (their styles quite similar), and he and fellow THS Hall of Famer, Rex Stout, were cousins.

T.C. Broadnax, Jr. (THS 1987)

2019 Hall of Fame Inductee

Public Administrator.

A Trojan winner; from the 1986 State Basketball Championship squad and 1987 Homecoming King to “king of Dallas”! After Topeka High, Mr. Broadnax earned bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Communications at Washburn University and later a master’s in Public Administration from the University of North Texas at Denton. His career in public administration has spanned the continent beginning in Pompano Beach, FL, where he headed the city’s housing and community revitalization program. Next, Mr. Broadnax went to San Antonio as Asst. City Manager and from there to the Pacific Northwest as City Manager of Tacoma, WA, where, among other activities, he oversaw a community visioning process. On February 1, 2017, the Kansas native became City Manager of Dallas, the second Trojan to do so. George Schrader (1949) was the first. In effect, the CEO of a $3.6 billion enterprise with 13,000 employees.

Stephen G. Young (1989)

Stephen G. Young (1989)

2018 Hall of Fame Inductee

Music and school politics is the stuff that makes medical researchers; or, in the case of Stephen Young. At Topeka High Dr. Young was on Student Council as Speaker of Representative Council, but he was also Concert Master in the student orchestra. From THS Young went to Princeton University where he majored in history and the philosophy of science. His next stop was Washington University in St. Louis for his medical degree. Though trained as a cardiologist, he became more interested in medical research, in particular regarding pediatric diseases. His primary focus is “Lipid Metabolism and Progeria, which is a rare genetic condition that causes accelerated aging in children.” Presently a Professor of Medicine at UCLA, he has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and in 2010 won the Ernst Jung Medical Award from Germany. Dr. Young has written or co-authored scores of articles in books and journals and in 2010 was honored by the Topeka Capitol-Journal as a Kansan of the Year for his medical research achievements.
Brinton W. “Pete” Woodward Jr.

Brinton W. “Pete” Woodward Jr. (1958)

2018 Hall of Fame Inductee

If it weren’t for Pete Woodward’s grandfather on the Board of Education, Chester Woodward, he and all Trojans would have graduated from an “ordinary” high school and the Hall of Fame ceremony would have had a far more mundane setting. Woodward was the quintessential B.M.O.C.: President of Student Congress, Pres. Boys Pep, Math Club, Cross Country, Co-Captain Basketball squad, State AA Class tennis singles champion, Honor T, All-School Party King candidate, and so forth. After THS, Woodward attended KU where he majored in English History (of course) and Renaissance Humanities but was also a tennis letterman and a letterman on the varsity basketball team which reached the NCAA quarter finals. Next was the General Theological Seminary for a Masters of Divinity (1965). Ordained an Episcopal priest, he was curate of St. David’s in Topeka (1965 – 1967). Serving at several eastern prep schools during the 1970s, Woodward became Headmaster at Holderness School in Plymouth, NH, in 1977 stepping down in 2001.

Jean Eberhart Dubofsky

Jean Eberhart Dubofsky (1960)

2018 Hall of Fame Inductee

Jean Eberhart’s THS resume under “school activities” may well have been the longest for any member of the Class of 1960: Debate letterman, Honor Pep, A.F.S., World staff, Quill and Scroll, Usher Club, French Club V-P, Math Club, Science Club, Kansas Council on Foreign and Domestic Affairs, Masque and Wig, etc. A National Merit Semi-Finalist and winner of a Betty Crocker Homemaker of America Award, she used her scholarships to attend Stanford University (1964) and from there Harvard Law School (1967). For two years Eberhart was a legislative assistant to Walter Mondale (1967 – 1969), but then moved to Colorado to practice law. From 1975 to 1977 she served as Deputy Attorney General of the State of Colorado and then appointed (1979) a Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court – the youngest and first woman to that post. Upon retiring from the Court in 1987, Mrs. Dubofsky entered academia at the University of Colorado and by the 1990s back in private practice where she is known for her involvement in civil rights, women’s issues and gay rights.