For Orville Peterson in 1943, the air was filled with excited young men graduating from West High School and getting ready for war.
At the time, Peterson was 17 years old and almost every boy his age was a Jr. ROTC student waiting to turn 18 and head overseas to fight the Germans and Japanese.
"At that age you're not afraid," said Peterson, now 83. "When you're that young, you think you can conquer the world, that nothing can stop you."
And as the oldest public school in Utah, West High has seen thousands of students pass through its hallowed halls, having used the educational meeting ground as a stepping stone to bigger and better things.
The school, originally called Salt Lake High, opened its doors in an LDS Church ward building and graduated six girls and four boys in 1890.
"For Utah to receive statehood, they had to have public education," said Linda Hale, the school's alumni association liaison. "The Mormon and Catholic churches had private schools. To acquire statehood, Utah had to prove to the Union they had high schools."
The new school acquired students quickly, and in 1914, moved over to the current location on 300 West after the University of Utah relocated. The student body split between a new school in eastern Salt Lake City, later called East High, and the original school was dubbed West High.
After more than 110 years, two wars, the Great Depression and advancements in technology and security, West High is still educating youngsters. It is expecting to graduate about 350 seniors this year.
And Hale, who met her first husband at West and graduated from the school in 1962, said she remembers West High as a "melting pot," where everyone was welcome despite their nationality, and the school still boasts a diverse ethnic background of students to this day.
Yet today, West High has fought a stereotypical image depicting the school as one rife with gang activity and troublemakers.
The high school, like other schools in the Salt Lake School District and surrounding districts, has security cameras monitoring hallways and police officers on staff.
"When I was here, kids were of a different mentality," Hale said. "Kids of my day and age knew that if we got in trouble at school, we would get in trouble with our parents. We never questioned authority."
But students today say the current stereotype is false and, although the school is still a melting pot, most students get along with one another and mix between different cliques.
"We used to be known for gangs and stuff, but I don't think there's anything dangerous now," said Ami Deiss, a freshman. "Now it's academics. We've been the number one school in Utah for three years."
But at the heart of the 117-year-old high school is diversity. Even in the early days, the school welcomed students of all religious or ethnic backgrounds, be it Catholic, Greek-Orthodox, Jewish or LDS, Hale said.
"In the 1980s, the principal at the time, Harold Trussel, was very community conscious," Hale said. "He got a hold of the reverend from the Baptist Church and talked to every religious organization and got them involved in West High. His idea was to befriend the students of those congregations and show them it wasn't just a Mormon school for the Mormon kids."
And as the years passed, West High grew in diversity as well as academics. The school was one of the first to add an Extended Learning Program, which brings 7th- and 8th-grade students to take high school classes, and encourages students from families who didn't attend college to become excited by the idea of higher education through the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program.
"No one has ever said to them you're going to go to college," Hale said. "So we make the commitment early and give them classes, study skills and other things."
The school also gives away 56 scholarships to students to attend college or university-level education upon graduation.
Peterson said the school has changed over the years, but he remembers his time there with fondness.
"It was a good school with a lot of good school spirit," he said. "It had a proud tradition of scholastics and was a darn good school. I'm proud I was a Panther."
E-MAIL: lgroves@desnews.com