Building Trades Program Dates To Early ’70s
SYRACUSE — Wawasee High School was one of the first schools in northern Indiana to have a vocational education program. Several vocational opportunities were offered when the school originally opened in the fall of 1968.
Although building trades was not one of the original programs offered, it began with the 1973-74 school year. When work begins in the coming school year on a new home in North Webster, it will mark 45 years since the first project began in Syracuse.
Henry Smith, the principal at Wawasee at the time building trades was launched, gave much of the credit for the idea to David McGrew, then the vocational coordinator at the school. “We saw a number of kids in wood and cabinet making classes, so we thought why not build a house?” he said.
Building trades was offered as an elective and was a three-hour program with funding received from the state. “It was meeting the needs of kids,” Smith said, more specifically those students interested in working with wood and who didn’t do so well in traditional academic classes.
Rudy Cesco, an industrial arts teacher at the high school, became the first building trades instructor. His son, Randy Cesco, recalled his father was once a foreman for a construction company in California which installed terrazzo flooring so he was familiar with at least some aspects of home construction.
According to the WHS yearbook for 1973-74, a house at the intersection of Maple and Worth streets in Syracuse was the first building trades project. Apparently, though, Worth was a misprint because there is no street with that name in Syracuse. However, there is a North Street intersecting with Maple just east of what is now the Harold Schrock Athletic Complex.
It appears the house at 714 W. North St. was the first one built. An aerial photo taken for Kosciusko County assessor records in the spring of 1974 shows a structure at that address. A nearby house now at 404 N. Maple St., another possibility for the first house, was not shown on the 1974 aerial photo.
Building trades was officially incorporated as Wawasee Building Trades Inc. June 27, 1973, by the state. The articles of incorporation allowed for up to eight members on the board of directors and the original eight were Ray Buhrt, Rudy Cesco, Robert Jones, Chester Elder, Christian Koher, David McGrew, Clair Mohler and Robert Reed. None of the original board members still serve on the board, but one who began a few years later, Barry Miller, retired after the 2017-18 school year.
Randy Cesco also recalled part of the house he grew up in on the north side of Lake Tippecanoe in the Old Mill Place subdivision was built by Wawasee Building Trades. It is between the Lake Tippecanoe Country Club and Patona Bay.
Wawasee may have had the first building trades program in the local area. Warsaw completed its 36th year of building trades in May, Goshen built its first house in 1976 and Fairfield’s program did not begin until about the late 1970s or early 1980s.