Tifton’s first school, the Tifton Institute, located at the corner of 4th St and Tift Ave, was constructed in 1891. Prior to its construction, children attended classes in a small pine shack downtown Tifton that was also used as a courthouse and a church. Residents formed a stock company to establish the school and charged tuition: primary students, $2; intermediate, $2.50; and high school, $3.

The city bought out the Tifton Educational Co. in 1897 and named the first school board soon after. A referendum to levy a school tax failed in 1900, but a second effort in 1906 passed. That same year, construction began on new school, Tifton Grammar School, which housed grades one through eleven, was located where the post office is now, and was built at a cost of $30,000.

By 1912, a drive for a second school began. Tifton High School, the present County Administration Building, was finished by 1917 at a cost of $100,000 and was used as a school for the next 53 years. It housed grades six through eleven, and Tifton Grammar School housed grades one through five. In 1944 this was named Annie Belle Clark for its long-time principal.

Meanwhile, children who lived outside the city limits attended county schools. Teachers normally taught for three-month terms and then moved on to another school. At one time, there were 28 separate schools in the county, but a consolidation drive spurred by World War I brought the number to 14 by 1927. This was also the year that the Tifton Junior High was built at 506 W 12th St.

The city and county schools merged completely in 1955. G. O. Bailey, the city superintendent, became principal of Tifton High School, and Henry Banks Allen, the county superintendent served as the first Tift County consolidated superintendent. By 1956, three new schools - Northside, Southside, now Charles Spencer, and Matt Wilson High School were begun. The next educational milestone came in 1962 when Tift County High school opened on 8th St, then a dirt road. This is currently Eighth Street Middle School. The football stadium was built in 1966, and a new junior high, now Northeast Campus, TCHS, followed in 1970.

Tifton Industrial School, now J. T. Reddick, housed Afro-American students in grades one through eleven from 1917-1957, and Matt Wilson High School educated Afro-American students in grades eight through eleven from 1958 until 1968. It reopened in 1917 as a seventh grade center while J. T. Reddick housed all 6th graders in Tift County.

Lake Drive, now Len Lastinger opened in 1963 and was built for a cost of $232,000. G. O Bailey, named for the long-time Tift County educator, was built in 1971.

Citizens passed a on referendum in 1995 to build the present Tift County High School. In 1997 they passed the first SPLOST, which allowed the bonds to be retired in June, 2002. This 34 million dollar complex which includes practice fields, a gymnasium that seats 1800 and a Performing Arts Center is debt free. When Tift County High School was dedicated in 1998, board of education member cut the ribbon in front of the special memento, the cornerstone from the first high school at the post office site.

In 2001, Tift County voters gave the Board of Education approval to extend the first SPLOST so that construction could begin on a new primary school and additions and improvements could be made at other schools. This new facility opened in 2003. The football stadium was named Brodie Field in 2002 in honor of Gene Brodie, Athletic Director from 1976-1994.

There are thirteen schools in the system: Annie Belle Clark Primary, Charles Spencer Elementary, Eighth Street Middle School, G. O. Bailey Primary, J. T. Reddick Elementary, Len Lastinger Primary, Matt Wilson Elementary, Northeast Campus of TCHS, Northside Primary, Omega Primary and Elementary, Pre-K Center, Sixth Street Academy and Tift County High School.

Currently additions are being made to Tift County High School enabling the school to house the 9th grade on the main campus. The other schools in the system will be realigned to include Northeast becoming a middle school along with Eighth Street Middle and all the other schools will become elementary schools housing K - 5. The Pre - K students will still be housed at the Pre--K Center on 12th St which was formally Annie Belle Clark.

Most of the information was taken directly from The Heritage of Tift County Georgia 1905-2003 that was published in 2003.

The Heritage of Tift County Georgia 1905 - 2003. Vol. 1, Walsworth Publishing Co., 2003.

As an adopted Blue Devil, I am still astounded by the amount of Blue Devil Pride within our high school as well as the community. Being an alumna of Cook High and still living within the Cook County line, I have never witnessed (nor felt) the kind of overwhelming pride for my own alma mater as I started to have when I began working at Tift County High School over four years ago. This wave is infectious, and I’ve felt it during the school day, during the Alma Mater at Brodie Field- an awe inspiring sight in and of itself, and even on shopping trips around town.

Imagine my surprise when the high school media center received a call from the Tift County Public Library with a patron request on the history of the Blue Devil’s Origin. Using this as pretense to handle the 1917 Talisman, Tift County High School’s annual, I just started to dig.

In the earliest annuals from 1917 and 1918, there is no mention of Tifton High, as it was then known, having a mascot of any kind.

There was a gap of 20 years where the media center didn’t have a copy of the annual. Opening up the 1938 Talisman, I was met with the dedication page: “We, the Senior Class of 1938, respectfully dedicate this issue of The Talisman to Gerald Herring, Sr., Bob Herring, Jeff Parker, Neil Ryder, Donald Ryder, Silas O’Quinn, Roy Thrasher, Louis Matthews, Major Whiddon, and Ralston Patrick who were Tifton High School students that went to World War in 1917 to insure democracy for the world. This is the second issue of the Talisman. The first was printed in 1917, the year that the United State entered the war, and discontinued until the Senior Class of 1938 took up their work and continued to produce this edition. We intend for this Annual to be an everlasting tribute to those who fought for the United States. Our motto is fitting for the theme of this book. It is ‘I am an American.’” * Denotes deceased during WWI.

I am not sure why they considered the 1938 annual to be the second in production when a 1918 lays in the TCHS archives, but more curiously this edition was plastered in mentions of the Mighty Blue Devils with no mention of the adoption of the mascot. This caused me to do as any curious person would do: I skimmed the previous annuals and the internet for mentions of the soldiers. I found Jeff Parker sitting in the Class of 1919. He proudly stares out of his class photo in his crisp suit with his hands in his lap, and you wonder if this was the last picture taken of him before he decided to join the war effort.

As there were no other faces or names found in the 1917 or ’18 annuals, I started to comb the advertisements of the 1938 and 1939 annuals. Within them I found advertisements from alumni which included both Herring brothers: Gerald “Jake” Herring, Sr., class of 1916, and Robert “Bob” Herring, class of 1913. There were no other mentions of the other soldiers within annuals.

From this point, I made the transition and began research via the internet.

On www.findagrave.com, a memorial website that mainly honors soldiers, I found the headstone of Robert “Bob” Herring which also included a brief history of the Herring brothers in WWI stating that they became a part of the American Expeditionary Force under the command of General John Joseph “Blackjack” Pershing and trained in France. The areas of France that General Pershing commanded were close to the areas where the legendary French soldiers the Chasseurs Alpins fought. These soldiers were mainly known by the nickname given to them by the Germans — les Diablos Bleus, or the Blue Devils.

In researching, we received several theories. Alumni from the 1980’s sent us that they remembered being told by their faculty that we got our mascot from Duke University. Coach Ivey Vickers answered and said she had been told by her father, the late James Winfred “Vic” Vickers, that the football coach and principal of Tifton High, Coach B.G. Childs, from 1914-1917 was himself a Duke University Alum and advocated for Tifton High to adopt the mascot. Albeit, he would have had to do this from the community standpoint after his retirement as Duke University did not adopt the Blue Devil as their mascot until 1922. From various stories graciously given from Mrs. Holly Hall and Mr. Spud Bowen, we pin pointed the year of adoption of the Blue Devil Mascot around 1924-1926. Mr. Bowen attributes this to our local American Legion, Georgia Post 21, bringing in the French Battalion, the Chasseurs Alpins, to Tifton around this time.

In short, what I have found are theories and coincidences that lend themselves to a story of the history of our mighty Blue Devils. We at Tift County High School ask the community that if you have any information to clarify or any information to correct from this story to please contact Lauraleigh Shealey at the High School either by e-mail shealey@tiftschools.com. We are trying to preserve the history of the Blue Devil, and sometimes the history can only be saved through the grace of community.

Just an added piece of information - The Tift County High School's girls' teams were known as the Angels until 1979 when they became the Lady Devils.

Lauraleigh Shealey

October 11, 2017

Tift County High School