Newton High School’s Tiger Roars student newspaper was one of the most enjoyed parts of the high school experience during its 17-year run from 1982 to 1999.
Now students and community members who enjoyed the publication as a student can now go online and read the entire archive.
The project was the brainchild of former NHS teachers Dottie and Andy Armstrong. Dottie was asked to teach a journalism class in 1982, but her only request was if they could put out a weekly student newspaper.
School officials agreed, and the Tiger Roars was published every week during school until the Armstrongs retired in 1999.
“We didn’t have a computer,” Andy said. “It was all done on typewriters and was cut and pasted together. Nelson’s Printing printed it weekly at no cost to us, and it was sold for 25 cents per copy.”
The editions ranged in size from four in the first edition to 18 pages on May 25, 1990. The staff ranged from four students the first year to its maximum of 13 students in both the 1986-87 and 1993-94 school years. In 1990-91, elementary and junior high pages were added to the publication.
Each week, Dottie saved a copy of every issue of the newspaper and put them in a notebook binder by the years.
After they retired in 1999, the books sat in a bookcase upstairs in their Newton home.
“For 19 years, I passed them thinking how neat it would be if someone could put them in a form that could be shared for the class reunions,” Andy said. “I decided three months ago that if it was to be done, I would have to do it.”
Andy said he stopped several times to read articles that brought back up memories, prolonging the project a while. Then he looked into a delivery system that could be easily accessed and used.
After seeking advice from several people including his pastor, Brian Rushing, his son, Rob, chamber director Emily Pugh and others, he decided to use Google drive to house the 5.274 gigabyte archive.
“It took 28 hours to upload the 5.274 gigabytes in JPEG form,” Andy said. “It is now ready to view on your computer, smartphone, tablet or other electronic device. If you don’t have access to the internet, I can also provide anyone with a copy of it if they bring by a ‘thumb’ drive. I will copy it for them.”
The link to the archive is available at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Xss9G-MWeBqZUTfTTF8Awjcz5grWxg1h.
