While orchestral students played music in the cool indoors, games, food, and other activities were being enjoyed on a warm, sunny day outdoors at Walton High School Saturday.
The school community came together to celebrate the school’s 50th academic year, which ends next month, and with many organizations providing information and a cool tent respite at their booths.
It was a low-key festival, but exemplified the ethos and spirit of a high-performing school that has grown with its community.
Students drew and painted artwork that was displayed on the walls of the performing arts center, which opened along with a new gymnasium in 2019.
They sit now where the original classroom building was located when Walton opened for classes in the fall of 1975 on a winding stretch of Bill Murdock Road.
What had been farm country not that many years before would soon become a busy hub for a fast-growing, sprawling East Cobb.
Walton’s opening alleviated heavy overcrowding at Wheeler High School, where I had been a freshman just the year before.
While I missed many of my friends who had begun attending the—ahem—other WHS, I could see how fast things were changing in East Cobb.
There was land along the greater Johnson Ferry Road corridor that was being scarfed up, going from animal-grazing to new subdivisions and retail centers in quick fashion.
It didn’t take long for Walton to be overcrowded, too, and in 1981 Lassiter High School opened, followed by Pope High School (named after a former Walton teacher) in 1987.
When I returned to East Cobb in 1990, after more than a decade being away at college and as a young adult, I almost didn’t recognize the place.
Yes, it had the classic suburban look, just as I remembered, but the feel was different. East Cobb had gotten busy, and Walton had become one of the highest-rated high schools in Georgia, coming under a novel conversion charter governance.
Walton was a magnet for families seeking academic and extracurricular excellence, and there’s hardly a neighborhood in its attendance zone that doesn’t advertise that fact when the “for sale” signs go up.
Many of the booths at the Walton celebration Saturday displayed trophies from past athletic competitions. Others showed off plaques commemorating orchestral trips to Carnegie Hall.
Little about the present campus—the new classroom building opened in 2017—resembles what was there in 1975. But Walton’s evolution reflects so much about what East Cobb has become, and how we think of the community today.
Students’ artwork hanging on the walls in the theatre building also exemplify that spirit. One was a painting of George Walton, one of America’s founding fathers and a Georgia signatory to the Declaration of Independence.
Many featured the schools’s logo and sports themes, while others rendered past and present buildings and campus landmarks.
There are so many ways that thousands of students have experienced Walton for the past 50 years. In a half-century, Walton’s impact on the community is unmistakeable.
As the Dorian Orchestra played “Fields of Gold” (video below) in the theatre, it was easy to close one’s eyes and get swept away with memories from high school days—no matter where one may have gone to high school—when the future of young people seemed so limitless.
Related:
- Cobb schools postpone safety sessions—for safety reasons
- Cobb school board, commission to start FY 2026 budget process
- East Cobb resident named to Ga. charter schools commission
- Cobb school district police chief dies
- Lassiter, Walton, Wheeler students named Georgia Scholars
- LGE Community Credit Union announces 2025 scholarship program
- Cobb Schools Foundation honors 2025 volunteers of the year
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