Pueblo High School, considered by many to be the heart and soul of South Tucson, is approaching its 50th anniversary.

“It really serves as a nucleus of pride for the community,” South Tucson Police Chief Sixto Molina says, echoing many other South Tucsonans.
The school will celebrate its anniversary in October with a tailgate party, its homecoming football game against Rincon/University High School, and a barbecue.

Pueblo has produced many influential leaders in South Tucson over the years, including Chief Molina, former South Tucson Mayor Dan Eckstrom, and Pima County Supervisor Ramón Valadez.

“Much of the leadership in South Tucson has come out of Pueblo,” Valadez says, crediting the high school with helping to make South Tucson the city it is today.

The school has produced businesspeople, athletes, and men and women of the armed services who have all excelled, according to Eckstrom, Valadez’s predecessor.

Eckstrom, who graduated from Pueblo in 1965 and is on the school’s alumni committee organizing the festivities for the anniversary, credits Pueblo
for much of his own success.

“There was a heavy focus on lifetime learning and leadership,” he says of the school.

The emphasis on leadership has been valuable to the City of South Tucson, Eckstrom says. “It’s had a positive impact because Pueblo has produced a lot of South Tucson’s government.”

Valadez, who graduated in 1984, also credits the school for the man he is today.

“You never know what the future holds, but the Pueblo staff helps you prepare for that future,” he says.

The school opened its doors in 1956 to take a load off Tucson High School, which was the largest school in the United States at the time, says Pueblo’s current principal Patricia Dienz.

Pueblo had roughly 900 students its first year, which included students from the Tucson Indian Training School. Today, 1,196 students attend the high school, according to Dienz.

Pueblo was the first high school in Arizona to have a female principal, the first high school in Tucson to have weekend assemblies, and the first high school in the country to give students polio shots, according to “Looking Back,” a book that chronicles the first 15 years of the high school, which Eckstrom helped to write.

Eckstrom thinks he and his classmates’ experiences at the school may have been unusual in the United States during the tumultuous 1960s.
“We had a mixed and diverse student body with people from all races,” he says. But race or ethnicity was never an issue at the school, according to Eckstrom.

“It was interesting because even though your classmates didn’t have the same color of skin, we all worked together,” he says.

Today 87 percent of Pueblo is Hispanic, according to Dienz.She points out the Pueblo campus reflects the South Tucson community and students bring “their food, experiences, and culture,” to campus, which everyone can enjoy.

For Molina, what “makes Pueblo, Pueblo” is the dedication of long-time faculty members. He says the community trusts the school because it is able to keep good teachers for so long. The dedication of the faculty has stayed true over the years.

Maggie LaTurco, who graduated from Pueblo in 1961 and is now a secretary at the school, agrees the teachers are a strength. “They really care about the students,” she says.

One of Pueblo’s biggest recent accomplishments was becoming a magnet school, essentially a public school that draws students who are interested in specific subjects, says Dienz.

In addition, Pueblo’s attendance rate is up, the dropout rate is down, and the school had the fourth highest math scores in the Tucson Unified School District for the 2004-2005 school year, she says.

Perhaps this is why it is not unusual to see Pueblo alumni send their children to the same school. “I see former students that have grandchildren that come to our school,” says LaTurco. Her three children all graduated from Pueblo.

From a physical standpoint not much has changed at the school. “There’s two new buildings and a new gym, but it still looks the same now as it did then,” says Chief Molina, who belongs to Pueblo’s class of 1969. The gym is named after former NBA all-star and Pueblo graduate Lafayette Lever after he donated money to help build it.

LaTurco notes that, “Now we have a fence, monitors, and a security check point.” But that doesn’t diminish her sense of pride.

“Don’t talk bad about my school or you’ll have me on your back,” she says, laughing.

After 50 years, Pueblo pride is still going strong.

“Pueblo is kind of the South Tucson icon because we’re right in the middle of everything,” Dienz says. “So to make it 50 years is very special.”