A cornerstone of the Fox C-6 School District, two former music department directors and three former students will enter the Fox High School Alumni and Staff Hall of Fame.
The school’s alumni association announced the hall’s second class will be composed of former Fox High School teacher, principal and district superintendent Richard Simpson, former band director David Butler, former choral director Martin Johnson and former students Luke Brennecke, Tammy Hawkins and Michael Roberts.
“We are fortunate to have a great class for our second year,” said Joe Salsman, a Fox High School assistant principal and member of Fox High School Alumni Association’s executive board.
A banquet is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 14, in the Fox High School gym, 751 Jeffco Blvd., in Arnold. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. and dinner will be served at 6 p.m.
Tickets for the event cost $30 and may be purchased at bit.ly/FHSAlumni.
Fox High has had a Sports Hall of Fame since 2005, but it did not have a way to honor alumni and staff members for non-athletic accomplishments.
The hall to honor alumni and staff members for non-athletic accomplishments was established this year and the first class was inducted in March.
“The momentum we gathered after doing the first one has been amazing,” Salsman said. “We had over 50 alumni and staff nominated. A lot of people are learning about the Hall of Fame and are starting to nominate worthy staff and alumni. The outpour of nominations was really high this time.”
Salsman said the alumni association plans to induct future classes every fall, and the banquet will be scheduled in conjunction with the school’s homecoming festivities. Fox High’s homecoming football game is set for Friday, Oct. 20 and the dance is on Saturday, Oct. 21.
“It is kind of the kickoff to our homecoming week,” Salsman said. “I think that will be better doing it in October instead of March.”
Along with inducting the newest class, the Hall of Fame banquet will feature tours of the school. Salsman said Student Council members will lead tour groups of between eight to 10 people on a 15- to 20-minute tour an hour before the start of the banquet.
“We hope a lot of people will want to see Fox High School, and if they haven’t been here in a while, they will see all of the great things we have done,” he said.
Richard Simpson
Simpson was a teacher and administrator for the Fox C-6 School District for 42 years, beginning as a math and science teacher for Fox High’s first freshman class in 1955.
He also served as principal for the Fox Junior High and High School and he served as the district’s interim superintendent.
“It is an honor that my dad has been blessed this way,” said one of Simpon’s daughters, Ruth Ann Washam. “His life was devoted to the Fox school district, we are thrilled.”
Simpson advocated for the construction of Rickman Auditorium, and the district named an elementary school after him. Richard A. Simpson Elementary School is located at 3585 Vogel Road in Arnold.
“Obviously, when we are inducting our Hall of Fame members, it is for what they did at Fox High School, but he moved on to do great things for the whole community after he left Fox High School and went to the Central Office,” Salsman said. “He was a bedrock in our community. I don’t think there is enough good things to say about Mr. Simpson.”
Simpson died in December 2017. He was 85.
Washam, along with her sister, Leah Anne DeBold, and brother, Rich Simpson, plan to attend the banquet.
“I think I will get teary-eyed,” Washam said. “I will have to speak, so I will have to pull myself together. I know if my dad were still around he would be thrilled to have this honor. He would do anything for Fox, and he kept doing anything for Fox after retirement.”
David Butler
Butler, 83, of Arnold taught at Fox from 1962 to 1992.
He said he was hired at Fox High as a vocal teacher after graduating from Southeast Missouri State University, and he took over as band director after about four years.
“It is quite an honor, and I was taken aback for a few minutes.” Butler said of his reaction to being told he was being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
In 1980, he helped form the Arnold Community Band. He said the band was formed because some of his former students wanted to continue to perform.
He is still the director of the community band where 18 of the current 45 members are his former students, he said.
“The quality of students we had were fabulous,” he said.
Butler said one thing that stood out to him during his time at Fox High was when he was able to bring a group of band students to perform in South Africa in 1983. He said he always appreciated the support he received as the band director.
“We had a fabulous bunch of administrators in the main office and high school,” he said. “They were always so helpful. If I wanted to try something new, it was go for it, good. It was a very good situation.”
Marty Johnson
Johnson, 83, of St. Louis County was Fox High’s choral director from 1967 to 1984.
He conducted seven different vocal ensembles, such as the Senior Girl’s Glee Club and the Concert Choir which both achieved distinguished recognition at state and national conventions. Under Johnson’s leadership, Fox High choirs earned 46 “I” ratings and 8 “II” ratings in evaluative music contests.
“It is a tremendous honor and surprise,” Johnson said. “I loved my job and my students. We had some great times.”
Salsman said it is great that Butler and Johnson will enter the Hall of Fame together.
“Both of these gentlemen really started our choir program,” he said. “They got our music and choir programs to where they are today. We are still thought of as one of the highest band programs and choirs in the state, and we owe it to both of these gentlemen who started on the ground floor. They were instrumental in getting choir and band going in the right direction for Fox.”
Luke Brennecke
Brennecke, 75, of San Antonio, Texas said he wasn’t positive he wasn’t being scammed when Salsman called to inform him about his induction.
“I called back the next day and asked for Mr. Salsman to see if it was indeed Fox High school and he was the assistant principal,” he said. “It was legit.”
Bennecke graduated from Fox High in 1966. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.
Bennecke earned a doctorate degree in veterinary medicine degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia College of Veterinary Medicine and researched hazardous pathogens at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.
He also led Pathology Associates Inc., a pathology consulting firm, and authored more than 50 scientific articles, primarily on cardiovascular medical devices, before retiring in 2017.
Brennecke said he is looking forward to the banquet.
“I have not been back to Fox High School since my graduation in May 1966,” he said. “There have been some 20,000 graduates since the first class, and to be picked for the second induction, I feel very honored.”
Tammy Hawkins
Hawkins, 42, of Mountain View, Calif., said she was informed about her induction during a string of good fortune.
“I received the information of this honor, which blew me away,” said Hawkins, who is the vice president of cybersecurity and fraud prevention at Intuit, a financial software company. “Then I received information that I was being promoted at work. Then I received information that I won the CEO leadership award at my work. It was a dizzying month of amazing things.”
Hawkins said one of things that makes her induction so special is that her former English teacher, Cindy Bellinger, nominated her.
“She believed in me before I even knew who I was,” said Hawkins, who graduated in 1999. “I will always remember she bought a book for me when I graduated. It was a book full of inspirational women. She wrote in the front of the book, ‘I know you will become an inspirational woman like one of these ladies.’
“Having someone like that believe in you from childhood onward is amazing. Out of the thousands of folks who she influenced, it is humbling and rewarding to know that she sees me and I have made her proud.”
Michael Roberts
Roberts, 70, of St. Louis said his older sister, Pam Leavitt, nominated him, and he was informed of his induction by Jude West, who he went to school for 12 years in the Fox district.
“I was very honored that (Leavitt) would even think about doing something like this,” he said. “I like the idea of the Hall of Fame being for people who have made a difference in the lives of other people. As a career educator, that is what I hope I did.”
Roberts earned a degree in music education from Central Methodist College in Fayette in 1974, a master’s in art in education from Washington University in 1975 and a doctorate in education from Washington University in 1982.
He started his teaching career in Eldorado, and in 1983, he became the director for the Artist in Education Program, which is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Missouri Arts Council.
He then became curriculum director in comprehensive arts for the School District of University City before being named to the headship position for Topeka Collegiate School, a private co-educational school in Topeka, Kan.
Roberts earned a principal’s certificate at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and went on to become the board president for the Kansas City Independent Schools Association, head of school at the Catherine Cook School in the Chicago area and the president of the Lake Michigan Association of Independent Schools before retiring in 2018.
“What (Fox High) did for me was what I was inspired to do for others,” Roberts said.
“That is huge.”