Rancho High School Alumni Association
helps students of today
Organization reaches out by raising money for tutoring and scholarships and offering practical holiday gifts that enhance learning
By JOAN WHITELY
REVIEW-JOURNAL
About 800 graduates of Rancho High School are involved in a formally organized nonprofit alumni group to support their alma mater in practical ways.
Organized in 2001, the Rancho High School Alumni Association has already done numerous good deeds.
It raised matching money for a tutoring fund to help seniors pass their state proficiency exams.
It placed a money changer machine in the school library so students can easily make photocopies when doing academic research.
It established a fund to buy athletic safety gear.
It started a scholarship program to assist two fresh graduates each year.
It sponsors a Happy Holidays program, in which needy students receive a backpack filled with useful goods such as calculators, dictionaries and digital wristwatches, as well as a gift card to use at local stores.
"We all loved going to school, and we all appreciated the direction that it gave us," says Larry Lermusiaux, class of '69. A real estate agent, he is one of the founders of the group and currently what he calls "lead sled dog" in getting the word out to other alumni.
Some of the other Rancho alumni who already are involved with the association include the group's president George Townsend; real estate agent Augie Bustos; former elected official Frankie Sue del Papa; Frank Martin of Martin Harris Construction; former Nevada first lady Sandy Miller; Gage Parrish, who is chief financial officer of Coast Resorts; and Las Vegas city attorney Bryan Scott.
Many of those alumni maximized their education because they grew up in two-parent households, Lermusiaux says, noting that is less frequently the case today, regardless of high school.
But Rancho High, in particular, is in a neighborhood on the "lower socioeconomic end of things," according to Lermusiaux. Some Rancho students live in home shelters near the campus.
"Rancho has always been a working-class school," Lermusiaux says. "But that sometimes works positively. ... People have a heightened sense of what a helping hand can do."
Lermusiaux declined to specify how much money the alumni association has raised to date. "While contributions have increased" during the four years the organization has existed, "the areas of need have increased even more," he says.
The association's goal is not only to raise more dollars, but also to raise participation by Rancho alumni. The total pool of graduates is about 15,000, he notes.
Rancho High was the second public high school built in Las Vegas, preceded only by the original Las Vegas High, which is now a magnet school. So the Rancho-Las Vegas High sports rivalry is the town's oldest. Rancho has "a sense of history even for people who didn't go there," Lermusiaux says.
Rancho High has new campus buildings under construction. The alumni association has big plans for an event in spring 2006, shortly before most of the current Rancho High buildings will be vacated and demolished.
The group plans to sponsor Last Dance, which will feature an actual dance on school grounds, accompanied by guided tours for the public of buildings that are slated for destruction. The new campus buildings are scheduled to open in August 2006.
"We hope to sell or raffle off memorabilia" related to the school history and old buildings, Lermusiaux says. To reach the association, call 592-5244.
