How many schools can say they have celebrated one hundred years? Lyman Memorial High School will celebrate its centennial during the 2022–23 school year, and an Alumni Anniversary Committee is working in partnership with the Lebanon Historical Society to plan a series of events to honor this milestone.

The school’s biggest event will be an anniversary celebration this weekend, Sept. 9-11. This is exactly 100 years from when the high school was dedicated and opened.

The dedication for the new George W. Lyman High School, located where the current Town Hall on the Lebanon Green is, was held on Saturday, Sept. 9, 1922, in the assembly room of the school. The first day at the new school was Monday Sept. 11, 1922.

The celebration weekend will include music and sporting events, time to reunite with classmates, old friends, teachers and administration, and a ‘homecoming’ dance on Friday, among many other activities. At a Welcome Ceremony at 10 a.m. on Saturday, the organizing committee and alumni (the oldest, furthest traveled, etc.) will be recognized, and representatives from the Board of Education and state Department of Education will speak.

Alumni planning to attend will come from California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Missouri, Tennessee, Washington state, and many Connecticut towns. Former principals and superintendents also will be in attendance.

The event celebrates the extraordinary gesture of George W. Lyman, who upon his death in 1919 left a major share of his estate to the Town of Lebanon to build a high school. Lyman’s bequest of $15,000 towards construction and $36,700 for maintenance was accepted by a town vote of 180-16 on Oct. 4, 1920. In accordance with a clause in Lyman’s will, the school was to be named after him.

After two previous referendums to build a new junior-senior high school failed, it was a third on June 2, 1958, that approved a $595,000 appropriation for the new school with a gymnasium. The school at 891 Exeter Road opened in September 1959 (now the Lebanon Middle School). A Regional Vocational Agriculture Center was approved in 1961.

Again, the student population outgrew the existing building, and on Dec. 15, 1988, Lebanon voters approved construction of a new $18.25 million high school, marking the end of a nearly 20-year effort to expand existing school facilities and help relieve cramped classrooms. The new high school at 917 Exeter Road opened in 1992.

“Seventy-two of Connecticut’s 169 towns have populations under 10,000. Of those, only 11, including Lebanon, have their own high schools,” according to a Lebanon Historical Society newsletter. “Lebanon’s commitment to fulfilling and maintaining George Lyman’s legacy for 100 years places the town in an elite group of Connecticut communities able to maintain a local education system. Graduates often comment ‘We knew everyone in the school,’ adding that the subsequent strong bonds often lead alumni to stay in the area, an observation that speaks to the advantages of community-based education emphasized in Lebanon and the Lyman Memorial High School.”

Now at its third location and in its third building, Lyman Memorial High School still carries the name of the man who had no children of his own but left his fortune to benefit all the children of his hometown. Lebanon was ahead of its time with the building of a high school. In 1922, there were only 81 high schools in the state. In Connecticut, the public high school movement did not begin until the 1930s.

For more information, go to the Lyman Memorial High School Facebook page or register online at:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe30wRawmTnhMZ28SHSd5c5NUycpeVrw_PAJNrceRvjGirtfg/viewform?usp=sf_link