There are a lot of people in this area that graduated from Humble High School. Go Wildcats! Many more people see that campus every time they attend an event at Turner Stadium. However, the Humble High School on Wilson Road is not the original campus. It’s actually the third Humble High School building and opened in 1965.
The second Humble High School building was Charles Bender High School at the corner of Higgins Street and Avenue F. Even though it was called Charles Bender High School, it was also referred to as Humble High School since it was the only high school in Humble at the time. The Charles Bender High School campus opened in 1930 as a junior-senior high school for grades 6-11 (12th grade didn’t come around until the 1940s).
The original Humble High School was also located on Higgins Street. It faced Higgins Street, but it was more at the corner of Hermann Street and Avenue D. It was the first school building in Humble to be dedicated to just high school grades (8-11). The building was designed by Oscar Holcombe, who later went on to serve as mayor of Houston for 22 years.
The original Humble High School building was a 14-room brick schoolhouse. In addition to classrooms, it had an auditorium, a library and science lab, as well as a domestic science kitchen and dining room. A dedication ceremony was held Dec. 4, 1917, attended by Harris County School Superintendent J.W. Lyle. Students began attending classes at the campus starting in January 1918.
The first principal of Humble High School was Ms. Frances R. Hyde, who had taught in Humble starting in 1914. Humble High School was one of the earliest schools in Harris County to offer classes in automobile mechanics. It also had a football team, a baseball team, boys and girls basketball teams, a girls volleyball team, and a tennis club.
The motto “Impossible is Un-American,” which appears over one of the doors at Charles Bender High School, originated with the 1918 Humble High School. That motto appears on every page of the 1918 Humble High School yearbook.
Unfortunately, the building is no longer around. In 1930, the high school students moved to their new campus next door, Charles Bender High School. At that time, the old high school building was re-christened as the Humble Elementary School campus. After a new Humble Elementary School opened on Charles Street in 1949, the old high school building was still used for extra classroom space for Charles Bender High School. The old 1918 Humble High School was finally torn down in 1954 to make room for a new band hall, cafeteria and gymnasium to be added to Charles Bender High School
