Olde Schoole

It happened the other day at the televised funeral for the late Rep. Elijah Cummings.

The preacher said that when he and Mr Cummings met, Cummings had identified himself as a guy from south Baltimore and a proud graduate of Baltimore City College (which, for those of you out of town, is a high school. Please don't ask.)

The Reverend Walter Thomas, the Bishop of New Psalmist Baptist Church, replied that he was proudly graduated from the finest high school in the nation, the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.

Those two schools - known everywhere as City and Poly - are the gems of the Baltimore City Public Schools, and the rivalry between the two is legendary, In fact, the War of 1812 was temporarily put on hold for their annual football game.

My Dad's Poly ring from long, long ago

Those schools draw students from all over the city - Poly attracts engineering students and City is for those who want to learn language and history, so it's not like a neighborhood rivalry thing, but one of academic inclination.

Towson High

Out here in Baltimore County, though, you pretty much go to the high school in your area, which is why I am proud to say I am an honors graduate of Towson High School. I will admit to being a stranger to the honor roll selection committee, but in my defense, I wasn't in class all that often.

But in Baltimore, more than any other place in the country, it's all about where you went to high school. It's amazing. You can take someone who left high school and went to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship and then came home to be awarded degrees in disciplines far and wide, but when he or she is around home, people say, "Wheredja go ta high school?"

The lovely Sunny

They built a high school up the road in some old grazing land and called it Dulaney High, and my sister went there, but in an act of mercy, the county changed the boundaries just before I started high school and I wound up at Towson, where it was much easier to hitchhike home after detention. My beloved Towson High is the home of model Sunny Griffin, swimmer Michael Phelps, actor Divine, Nik Venet (who brought the Beach Boys and dozens of other acts to Capitol Records), and Jean Marie "Jeff" Donnell, tv and movie actress whose father was head of the Maryland Training School for Boys.

That's the ONE school about which no alumni brag, by the way.