The revisionism of the history of Columbia High School/Richland High School continues. My mom came to Camp Hanford in very early 1944, one of the first families into camp. She attended, along with older and younger siblings, the high school with the oldest sister graduating in 1946 and mom in 1954. I also attended, and was involved in the much-controversial name change to RHS in 1981-1982's class.
I have a stack of source material from yearbooks of that era, Richland Day's, magazines, early school newsletters, etc. Long after I'd graduated, a campaign was launched by faculty of the school to try to make the school's "image" more politically palatable. This effort was begun by a campaign of revisionist history of the early "mascot", "nickname" etc. to try to move away from the controversy of the image of both a bomb shell logo associated with the school as well as the later addition of the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb.
These revisionists have been at work since the mid 1990's, telling students at the school and anyone who'd listen that the Hanford Works employees contribution of a day's work pay towards the construction and sponsoring of a B-17 Bomber was the actual mascot of the early high school (how one instrument of war is more palatable than another escapes me). These people have never produced a document of that era proving this, no photographs and worse, the timeline doesn't even match- Yet they've successfully changed the truth in the minds of many alumni of the high school from the mid 1990's to the present.
Even when I've shown a few of the main people involved in this campaign yearbooks and school newspapers of the era, they are unwilling to admit the mistake. They continue to revise entries in Wikipedia (usually anonymously) and with no source references to back up their claims.
So here you are people- The definitive source paper on the issue; Exceedingly well written and with tons of supporting documentation to back up the true story of the Richland Bombers- The Bomber, The Bomb and the Bombers by Kieth Maupin.
Take it for a spin. And if that's not enough, I've got a box of school memorabilia to bury you under. Hear that, Mr. D? TCHT (talk) 23:58, 22 June 2010 (UTC)