ASHLAND — Documents recently uncovered are likely to shed historical light on the planning, construction and opening of Paul Blazer High School, which is observing its 50th anniversary this year.

The documents, from the Ashland Oil files of company president — and the school’s namesake — Paul G. Blazer, include Blazer’s remarks at the school dedication in October 1962, correspondence from Blazer, handouts outlining the school’s features, speeches by school officials, cost estimates from architects, bid analyses and other letters, memos, news clippings and pictures.

The documents languished in an Ashland Oil file for years and were recently loaned to The Independent by Stuart Webb, Blazer’s grandson. The company delivered the inch-and-a-half-thick sheaf of papers to Webb several years ago while cleaning out old storage rooms.

Webb is donating the documents to the Boyd County Public Library.

Some of the documents pertain to the school’s swimming pool which Blazer’s $100,000 donation helped make possible. School board chairman F.S. Crawford announced it in 1959 to the Ashland Rotary Club. His speech to the club notes that Blazer wanted the money to pay for a pool but didn’t insist that the board use it that way.

Blazer’s note to the board offering them the money also is included.

Other intriguing documents shed light on changing social mores at the height of the civil rights movement and in the midst of integrating Ashland schools.

Crawford’s 1959 note to Blazer asks him to inform the board “the policy that should be followed with respect to the use of the facility by minority groups, since integration will be complete in our public schools by the end of another year or two.”

In a two-page 1959 letter to Blazer, Booker T. Washington High School principal C.B. Nuckolls writes, “I am a strong adherent that the Implementation of the Supreme Court was to give my people equal educational opportunities,” and continues to point out that the pool would be “an educational program designed for good health under the courses of Health and Physical Education.”

Booker T. Washington was Ashland’s black grade and high school during the segregation era.

The implications are clear: with the addition of a swimming pool to a soon to be integrated high school, the district had to decide whether black children would swim with white children.

Taken for granted today, integrated swimming pools were almost non-existent in 1959.

The district had decided to name the school after Blazer more than a year before he made the pool donation; Blazer’s three-paragraph note of thanks is included in the file.

Other correspondence relates to further donations Blazer made through the Stuart Blazer Foundation. Stuart Blazer was his son, killed in Korea during the Korean war.

Blazer asked that a plaque be erected at the pool in his memory.

His donations helped pave roads accessing the school, buy and install a communications system, and endow a fund for extracurricular activities.

A financial analysis in 1960 showed that building the school would cost about $2.5 million. Current Ashland Superintendent Steve Gilmore estimates building it now would cost at least 10 times that much, probably more.

Webb received a similar file from Ashland Inc. regarding the early days of Ashland Community and Technical College, then called Ashland Junior College. That file is now in the hands of ACTC officials, who will be reviewing them in the coming weeks.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.