Several generations of Harrison High students have unified under a common goal that culminates this week with a “throwback” homecoming theme.

Present and past students hope their months of hard work will re-energize Panther spirit and evoke a sense of belonging to something much larger and stronger than themselves.

“We wanted to leave Harrison with a big impact and create more tradition and spirit here, so we decided to get the alumni involved and take ideas from them and build community and feel like we are all one,” said 17-year-old Destinee McBride, a senior.

Members of the school’s leadership team have been meeting since May with alumni from the 1950s and on to plan homecoming activities that include a Friday night barbecue tailgate, rival football game and afterparty, and a Saturday night dance. Events will feature the theme, “A Tribute to Harrison.”

The retro theme beat out “A Starry Night,” “Hollywood” and “Color Dance,” with the majority of the student body voting for the historic tribute at the end of last school year.

“You tend to fall into the same mold with themes,” said Audrey Tate, a senior who has worked on three homecoming dances. “This is something no one else can do because we are Harrison, and we are Panthers for a reason.”

Since school started, students have been decorating Harrison hallways with a historic timeline and copies of photographs, yearbook clippings and newspaper articles depicting student life of years past.

In her book, “Harrison High School Pioneers and Alumni,” 1981 Harrison graduate Teila Carroll Tankersley writes that Harrison School District 2 was organized in 1874, the second district in the Pikes Peak region after what became Colorado Springs School District 11.

Until 1850, the land of the present-day high school on Janitell Road was part of Kansas.

The first schoolhouse was a one-room building with a potbellied stove, a water pail and a barbed-wire fence to keep the cattle out.

In 1954, the district divided older students into a middle and high school building, where Gorman day care center is now, and in 1955, the district added 12th grade. The first football and basketball teams came into being, and students selected a mascot, the Black Panther, and chose black and white as the school colors. Gold was later added as an accent.

Ron Roehrich, a 1957 graduate, remembers casting his vote for the school fight song in half a gym. The other half wasn’t built until a year later.

Roehrich earned 11 varsity letters in high school. He played in Harrison High School’s gridiron debut on Sept. 24, 1955, in which Harrison beat Cripple Creek High 13-0.

“We played football on a dirt field,” he remembers. “We were a bunch of young kids thrown together. There was just a bonding that happened that I can’t explain, and it’s lasted over the years.”

Louise McClure, a 1959 graduate who heads a Harrison alumni group that meets monthly in Colorado Springs, said the high school remains important to many graduates.

“A lot of us are still in this town, and the high school is still there. It’s just part of us,” she said.

The current high school building opened in 1967, and girls soon lobbied to be able to wear pantsuits to school. The dress code changed in 1971.

Tankersley, who manages an alumni Facebook page and has organized all-year alumni reunions, said while interviewing alumni for her book, she learned about a ghost that reportedly haunts the school auditorium, that the neighborhood was once home to the Ute Indians and that cigarettes once were handed out for free at a school carnival.

“I feel like I know these people because of their stories,” she said. “It’s good for today’s students to hear stories from the classmates who went before them to have that connection.

“There was a time I didn’t want to say I went to Harrison. That meant you grew up on the south side of town, and for a while, Harrison’s reputation wasn’t good. That’s not the way it is now.”

Students from the Class of 2016 say they’ve enjoyed working with the alumni.

“They’re funny,” Destinee said. “They’re really inspiring and have helped open my eyes.”

Understanding what the culture was like at Harrison High decades ago has shown student body president Celine Maldonado how different school was back then.

Because the school was small, nearly all students played sports, “or they didn’t have a team,” Celine said. “Now, we have a lot of students, but we don’t get enough for the teams.”

Classmates seemed closer, Destinee said. “There was more togetherness.”

Yasmine Wright, senior class president, said the cultural, social and ethnic diversity of Harrison unites today’s students. But she has big hopes for homecoming.

“We want our school to be more involved in school activities because we think it would bring us together even more,” Yasmine said.

Homecoming organizers are reviving traditions from the past, including the Panther fight song and black-and-white Fridays, in which students wear school colors. Tankersley will crown a homecoming king and queen from among the alumni.

“We wanted to find a way to bring back the school spirit from the old times to build Panther pride,” said senior Dallian Haynes.