School History

A History:

As with all schools, T.H. Bell has its own unique history. We would like to share a little of that information with you.

The user is welcome to scroll down or use the links in the table below to navigate through Bell's selected history.
School Dedication	School Construction & Photos	School Colors/Yearbook
School Name	School Principals & Head Secretaries	School Website
School Namesake	School Firsts	Fox Cool School Photos
School Mascot	School Logo	Bell @ 50 Photos

A School for 6th Graders:

Construction of the school began in 1961. During the 1962-63 school year, the east wing was completed and only 6th grade students attended. All the construction was finished in the fall of 1963 when the school became a junior high with 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students. The school dedication ceremony was on November 14, 1963 with the following speakers: Architect, Keith Wilcox; Contractor, Jay Wadman; Weber County Board Member, George Van Leeuwen; State Superintendent of Public Instruction, T.H. Bell, & Principal, Earl Cragun. Presently students from 7th - 9th grade attend T.H. Bell. The school opened it's doors to students on August 26, 27, and 28 for T.H. Bell's first student registration. Margaret Beyda was the school's Head Secretary over this operation. The first day of school at T.H. Bell Junior High School was September 3rd, 1963.

School Dedication:

By Clicking on the image above, the Program of Dedication will open in this space.

T. H. Bell was Dedicated on November 14, 1963. In the program, is a complete listing of all the teachers and staff that were originally hired in 1963.

Quick Fact: Notice the rectangular hole in the roof in this illustration.

This atrium was in the building until the late 1970's.
Somewhere in the late 1970's to the early 1980's it had acquired a roof, and was a greenhouse with lots of plant life. It was a jungle in there, but It created quite a bit of heat in the office area.
In the early 1990's, it was converted into the modern conference room with air conditioning that today is used heavily for meetings.

School Name:

Deciding on a school name was a major decision. These were some of the suggested names for our school:

Bonneville Jr. High	Edge Hill	Henry A. Dixon
Hill Crest	Hill Top	Jacqueline
John Glenn	Miles Goodyear	Mountain View
South Crest	South Terrace	Terrace Junior High
T. H. Bell	Van Leeuwen	Wasatch

School Namesake:

After much deliberation and planning, the name T. H. Bell was decided upon. Terrel H. Bell was Superintendent of the Weber County School District from 1958-1962. Mr. Bell instigated the building of the new school while he was superintendent. At the time of the dedication, he was State Superintendent of public instruction. Later, he was in President Reagan's cabinet as Secretary of Education from 1981 to 1984. Read more about Mr. Bell.

The School Colors, Yearbook, and Mascot:

School Colors: Red, White, & Blue

Yearbook: Sentinel

Mascot: Minuteman

In the past, selected students have taken turns as the school mascot. They dress up at games as a Minuteman to cheer on the Minutemen!

To learn more about the meaning of the Minutemen and the significance to the school and you click on this link.

Our yearbook is known as the Sentinel, and it featured 3 student mascots that were chosen to represent our school during the year 2009 –2010 as seen in the illustration to the right.

Three student mascots who represented the school from 2009-2010.

Construction:

By the numbers!

87,439 Total Square feet in orginal design

$12.90 - Cost per square foot (Construction of building only)

$13.60 Cost per square foot (Construction and Finish of site)

30 Total teaching stations

Total cost - $1,190,401.94 to build the orginal building

Historical Construction Photographs:

These were shown at the school dedication ceremony. Mouse over for a bigger image

The finished school in 1963

1962 - The view down an unpaved 5100 South

1962 - The choir and band door openings

1962 - Looking from the art room to the terrace water tower

1962 - Loading debris

1962 - Looking through to Roosevelt Elementary

1962 - A different kind of grading

1962 - Looking East & no houses

1962 - Looking northeast

The East parking lot was a playground in 1962

1962 - Heading home in style

1962 - A Crane helping to pour concrete

1962 - The bell rang

1962 - Heading for the big yellow bus

T.H. Bell has went through several upgrades since the orginal building was built. The exterior of the building has been added onto 2 different times.

During the 1970's the orignial addition to the school was the addition of the "wood" shop. Look for the vertical piece of metal on the outside of the building on the north side of the art room and the south side of the shops. The exterior brick can still be viewed in the "wood" shop.
During the 1990's the back hall or (vending hall) and the South East classrooms were added. Bathrooms and an ugraded heating plant was added on to the South East side of the school as well.

Bell's Principals:
Mr. Earl B. Cragun: 1962 - 1968	Mr. Ernest Rauzi: 1968 - 1970
Mr. Mark Angus: 1970 - 1984	Mr. Paul Ogden: 1984 - 1992
Mr. Ed Morgan: 1992 - 1993	Mr. Robert Stillwell: 1993 - 1998
Mr. Gary Reed: 1998 - 2003	Mr. Corey Jenkins: 2003 - 2008
Mr. Curtis VandenBosch: 2008 - 2015	Mr. Lenn Ward: 2015 - 2022
Mrs. Heather Hardy: 2022	Mrs. Nichole Warren-Doman: 2022 -

Bell's Head Secretaries:
Mrs. Margaret Beyda - 1962 - 1987	Mrs. Carolyn Phillips 1987 - 2000
Mrs. Cydnie Zampedri 2000 - 2018	Mrs. Jeridee Burnett 2018 - 2021
Mrs. Lisa Koopmans 2021 -

School Firsts:

A list follows below: Principal, Complaint from the public, Sports, & Computers

The first Principal, Mr Earl Cragun, was involved in about every aspect of T.H. Bell Jr. High. He was a very busy man. He was engaged in details concerning the construction of the school to deciding on school logo.

Everyone of us assume that the minuteman was the first logo decided for T. H. Bell; however, the original idea for the logo was a "bell" as the name was T.H. Bell.

Mr. Cragun wrote several letters to various organizations looking for rights to a drawing of a bell to use as an logo. Unfortunately, he couldn't secure the use of one.

This may have been a good thing in the long run, as the logo eventually was the Minutemen!

Principal Cragun

The First Complaint!

The first complaint to the school came from the neighbor off of the East parking lot. Some boys were throwing rocks at her cow that was in a corral just off the parking lot. One boy even threw a firecracker at it. Below is a picture of the cow in the corral with some of the boys trying to get it's attention.

First and Sports:

Cheerleaders: The first cheerleading tryouts were held on September 24, 1963.

Football: The first football scrimmage was played against Mount Ogden with the score of 12-0 for Mount Ogden.

Basketball: The first basketball team did very well and nearly took the championship. They had a record of 6-2

Wrestling: Bell had a wrestling team in 1964.

First Computers:

The 1st computers at the school were purchased for teacher use in 1985. There were two computers with black and white monitors and very small screens. They had about 128 kilobytes of internal memory with no hard drive. All data was stored on a 3.5 floppy disk which could contain about 1 megabyte of memory (about 500 pages of double spaced text or about 1 photo). The user would input a 3.5 start-up disk to boot the machine, and then put in their own personal floppy to create and store data. At the time, these machines were sold for about $2,500 a piece and were quite and investment! Principal Paul Ogden, our forward thinking administrator, took the risk, and made computer users out of a few of his staff. The computer was of course a Macintosh 128k as pictured to the right. These computers were located in the faculty lounge which is where the attendance office is today in 2019.

1st computer network in the WSD

In 1992, T.H. Bell could also boast that it had the first computer network in the school district. Media Center specialist, Gary Jensen, wired a star network of about 10 windows computers in the library and eventually they were connected electronically to other libraries of information. These computers and the network were the school's first connection to the Internet. Some of the teachers that learned on the Macintosh, were now savvy enough to take their classes to the media center and "Gopher" on the Internet. HTML use on the World Wide Web was in it's infancy at the time and not established as of yet. Everything was text based at the time.

In the video above, students in Mr. Breen's Advanced Projects were the first students in the school to access documents through a computer network. This was the first network at Bell that was installed by the District Technicians: Vaughn Deem (sp), Jerry Olsen, and Larry Swain.

Logo - Minuteman:

The school’s first logo looked like the minuteman to the left. This was definitely what the school had as an logo into the mid 1980’s.

The logo that had worked on letters and mailings for the last quarter of a century was going to stay on mailings, but it was not adequate for viewing electronically.

Logo was used: 1963? - 1987

In the late 1980’s, Art instructor, Mrs. Barnett/Ostberg, with the approval of Principal Paul Ogden, declared a contest open to students to design a new school logo.

Superintendent

Jay Taggart

The winning prize was awarded to T.H. Bell student, Blaine Taggart in 1987. It was believed that Blaine's dad was the model for this winning entry. At the time, Blaine's dad happened to be Superintendent Jay Taggart of Weber School District. He was Superintendent from 1982 –1989. Mr. Taggart then went on to serve as the Utah State Superintendent of Public Instruction from 1990-1992

Logo was used: 1987 - 2004

The new logo was needed out of necessity.

When computers and graphics came of age, it was much easier to change a school logo, and the first need for an new logo was apparent when Technology Instructor and webmaster, Mr. Breen; and Media Specialist, Mrs. Wadsworth-Smith, were developing the school’s first website in 1998-1999. A website was something the school had never had before.

Blaine Taggart’s drawing was eventually converted to a bitmap image and given more detail by Mr. Breen’ s students in 1999 and used on the school's first website.

Over time, the determined, driven, and persistent idea’s, behind the“Fighting Minuteman”became lost in translation by the public and new staff members and acquired the nickname “The Angry Minuteman.”

Website Logo was used: 1999 – 2004

At the request of Principal Corey Jenkins, A new logo was designed and produced by Art instructor, Mr. Farr, during the school year 2003 –2004.

Principal Jenkins wanted Mr. Farr to update the logos that represented each Jr. High school in the district that were on display in the gymnasium. There had been several Jr. High schools built in the district over time, and they needed to be represented. Students were again involved as the logos of all the schools that hang in the gym were drawn and painted by students in Mr. Farr’s art classes.

The result was a change in the design of Bell’s logo with this project. Mr. Farr’s original design is to the left and can be viewed in our gymnasium, and in the tile floors of the school.

Logo was used: 2004 - 2016

Note: This logo is in our tile floors. When they were orginally put in the floors, for months students were told not to walk on the icon. Students walked around the minutman logo so they did not "tread on the minuteman."

This school wide logo was a modified version of Mr. Farr’s design as seen to the left. This image was found on the school’s website through 2011. It is used at the school on official clothing and documents. The most prominent place for this icon is in the tile floor in the front hallway of the school as your enter the building.

Logo was used: 2004 - 2016

The district was moving websites from stand alone designs that were managed by webmasters to templates that were controlled by the school district. When designing the new school website in 2012, everyone involved at the school (Teachers: Mr. Breen, Mrs. Wadsworth-Smith & Administrators: Mr. Patterson, Mr. VandenBosch) and at the district level (Mr. Brooks, and Mr. Coates) wanted a dignified look to the site. The illustration of the minuteman icons in any form did not seem to fit into the rectangular space at the top of the new website. After trying several ideas, Mr. Breen did some work with Adobe Photoshop and came up with the image at the left. It is the traditional look of the minuteman, and as the saying goes “What is old is new again!” If you look very closely, you will see that this image is basically the same as the first illustration. This image is only being used on the school’s website and was retired in 2017.

Logo was used: 2012 - 2017

Principal Lenn Ward used to be coach and head of athletics at T.H. Bell Jr. High when he taught here. He had a sports logo for the football team that was somewhat similar to the New England patriots logo. There was something with the logos being used at Bell that made him uncomfortable with them. The image of a weapon in the school logo. This concern was raised in 2015 when Mr. Ward became Principal. There had been school shootings across the country and students were suspended for weapons in school. Why would the school have as its representation a icon with a gun? It was felt that this tweak was needed to the school icon. Mr. Morris, a coach and spanish teacher, helped out when he asked graphic artist, Matt Crane, to design a new icon. Principal Ward reflected back on the sports logo that he had when he was athletic director and approved this logo drawn by Mr. Crane. The result is what we see currently used at the school.

Logo: 2017 - Current

School's Website:

The original website was a unique website from the start as the home page included 4 pages. It was based on frames. The blue left pane was stagnate and the white page on the right would change when the html code was activated. What really made it unique, was the white and red stripe in the frame. The effect was given by including two pages that were closed to content. Including the school colors were important to the developers in 1998 -1999.

Operational 1999 - 2004

Above: Original website

The original site was built for expansion. The content on the site expanded. One thing that allowed it to grow was that the same two people that developed it were still adding content. Technology & Engineering instructor, Mr. Breen had worked on the design, and relied heavily on Media Center Specialist, Mrs. Wadsworth-Smith for the “look and feel” of the sight.

The website as it looked from 2004 -2011.

Operational 2004 -2011

Above: Modified or rebuilt website

Even though the old site was still functional, a different concept is now being used district wide. More of the staff is contributing to this website, as the hope is this will be a more robust website, and that information will be easier to find. The website wouldn’t be up this fast without the district programmers in Information Technology having set up a shell for the same two people to “develop Bell’s look.” This website is ultimately a very big collaborative effort!

Operational 2012 - 2017

Above: Website that was retired in 2017

The last version of the website is was also still operational. However, it was the law catching up with the technology that made us change this time. The new website had to be Americans with Disability Act compliant. Everything on this old one was not able to be read by assistive technologies.

This website had much more information on it. It was active from 2017-2019.

Operational 2017 - 2019

Above: Website that was retired in 2019

The newest website was designed, and developed to be able to be more user friendly to those that are handicapped. It is able to be navigated with a keyboard, and text has been entered so it all can be read by assistive technologies. This one also includes a lot more information. In thinking about the handicapped in its design; it is also hoped it made it easier for everyone to find the information that they are looking for.

The look and feel of this website is now ADA compliant.

Operational November 1st 2019

The current ADA Compliant Website

Along with the Website that was retired in 2019 were the animations. Mr. Breen taught animation with the 9th Grade in a Communications class for about a quarter of a century. Students may remember animating their name or making a character that they created blink the eyes. The following are some of his selected animations that were developed for use on this website. The holiday animations were recycled each year.

Hold your cursor over the picture to see the animations.

The following animations were posted on the old website. Students used to look to see what events they might be announcing.

An animation technique, where a series of photographs were put together to create an animation. Here, a student with a sign letting everyone know when midterms are in 2018.

Words were animated in this picture as another technique to draw attention to an event.

In this animation technique, layers were used to give the illusion that your photograph was being taken.

In this animation technique, the individual letters are moved within each layer to create the desired message of when "mix it up day" was being celebrated

An event like Halloween always brought out the spooks in this animation.

A worried Turkey looks on as Thanksgiving vacation is announced.

An animation with reindeer guiding the sleigh in 2018 announcing the winter or Christmas Break.

Fox 13 - Cool School of the Week:

It was a collaborative effort of students that resulted in T. H. Bell being "Cool School of the Week" in 2007. Bell Students voted using many types of electronic devices on the Fox website for this event to occur. The broadcast was on the morning of March 7, 2007. Mouse over for full sized photo.

The two videos below were recorded over the air on the morning of March 7, 2007 of the Fox 13 broadcast.

It was edited and posted to YouTube originally by Mr. Thorngren. They are now attached to Bell's YouTube site to preserve them. Everyone can watch the actual broadcast in 2 parts thanks to Mr. Thorngren.

Celebrating Fifty Years

In 2013, there was a celebration for the 50th annversary of TH Bell Junior High. The administration invited the public to the celebration. There were games and events for the students. For the public, the library was set up by Mrs. Wadsworth-Smith with all the yearbooks from years past. All the school history information that has been stored over the years was brought out to be looked through. The speeches were modeled after the dedication ceremony speeches of being 3 minutes in length. The current Principal, Mr. Curtis VandenBosch, gave short remarks about the school and the event. Former Principal, Rob Stillwell was at the event. Teachers that had taught at Bell and retired from the WSD again passed through the halls. Mr. Leroy Bouwhuis a former science teacher and Mrs. Carol Dudman, a former physical education teacher were spotted. Carolyn and Blaine Phillips were also attending. Blaine was a teacher at Bell and Carolyn was the Head Secretary for a number of years at the school. They could note many changes within the school that were all for the better. Below are some selected photos of students enjoying the celebration on that day.