A couple of weeks ago, I saw an email that misspelled WMHS (Wiscasset Middle High School) as WHMS. And I thought, that’s funny; because, with the HMS, it’s like a ship. It stands for His or Her Majesty’s Ship, according to merriam-Webster.com. Not that Wiscasset has royal airs or heirs, but Marie Antoinette has been said to have missed making it to a home in Edgecomb; and Wiscasset does have a castle (Tucker).

And then I thought, oh, WHMS sounds like an editorial, with a ship analogy for the high school. But does it apply?

Here goes! Is the high school a vessel for the community, carrying it through thick and thin, which the town has had both of from the Maine Yankee years to now? 

Is it a ship ready to retire or partly retire depending on where the Future of the Schools Committee and its study lands, just as one class of Navy ship replaces another to meet the nation’s and world’s needs?

Between the school department’s energy project about six years ago and all the work that goes into the WMHS building and for which Facilities and Transportation Director John Merry and his crew have been drawing praise, it sounds like it still has a lot of life left in it. 

What about its relevance to the community, though? Elections and most meetings where a crowd is anticipated happen next door at Wiscasset Community Center, a hub for public and private events, with its gym, Senior Center, and a lot more. So, does WCC more fill the ship role, community-wise, than either or both of the schools?

Or, and I could land either way on this, is the high school still like a ship for Wiscasset, because a high school is a tie that binds its alumni for a lifetime?

The people you went to school with had a lot of shared experiences with you, such as everyone’s personal life markers being known by everyone else. Many of my classmates saw and heard me going through the halls and into my homeroom at the old Morse High School in January 1983 when the office told me my uncle was coming to pick me up. They did not say why. I knew. My grandfather had been dying. We knew it was any time. I knew my uncle would only be picking me up in the middle of the school day if my grandfather had died. 

I cried the whole walk and no one in the class I was interrupting in homeroom to collect my things from my desk bothered me as I cried. I needed to keep moving to be ready to leave and they knew it and, whether or not they knew it was over my grandfather, they knew it was fresh grief and just let me do what I needed to do. In our school years, everyone has a bus seat on one another’s lives.

And although I can’t speak too much to high school’s extracurricular togetherness because I was by choice focused on my bowling pursuits, we all certainly got to know one another to varying degrees and the reunions have been a joy. 

I have covered many Wiscasset graduations, including the ones at the Speedway, and about two of the reunion dinners, and observed the closeness of Wiscasset’s classmates and near-year classmates, from the ones who still see one another all the time, to those who return to town for reunion. They are a well bonded group.

As we have reported, the Future of the Schools Committee heard Sept. 16 an estimated savings of over $300,000 a year if Wiscasset tuitioned out its high school grades, moved the elementary students to WMHS with the middle schoolers, and closed Wiscasset Elementary School. It also sounded like there were some more numbers to be sorted, potentially, so we will all stay tuned.

Is the WMHS of today a WHMS, and should the town, as its owner-captain, stay the course with the status quo for tradition and other good reasons; change the itinerary to adjust for the times, enrollment-wise, etc.; or decide something else? More information ironed out and presented by the committee, and the key factor of public feedback, will help answer the question(s).