Renton High School alumni helping to plan the school’s centennial celebration recently got a sneak peak at the school’s much-talked-about tower classroom.

What they found was both uplifting and perhaps disappointing for those who believe in the ghost stories and myths about the school.

The only way to get to the tower classroom now is to go to the center of the school and take an elevator up to the third floor. There behind a locked door to what looks like a closet is a ladder. Where there used to be stairs, the ladder leads to a roughly 30-foot by 30-foot room.

The graduates, all from the 1950s and 60s, recovered about 300 tarnished trophies from the room.

According to Tom Tasa, a 1965 Renton High grad who was there that day, the room was not creepy at all, just basically like an unfinished attic. There was nothing spooky about the old tower classroom, except for droppings from pigeons that had gotten in through a broken window, now repaired.

Instead, there were 150 trophies in reasonable shape, although they needed cleaning and 150 more that were broken and in pieces.

The group sorted them by decades and found some from the early 1900s to the 1940s and ‘50s, lots from the ‘60s and ‘70s and a few from the ‘80s and ‘90s. The most current trophies from 2000 on are in the display cases within the school. Tasa said that most of the trophies are accounted for, except for some that might be in area restaurants.

Tasa doesn’t remember anything infamous about the classroom from his years at Renton High in the 1960s, but he said everyone knew where you were talking about if you mentioned the tower.

“It was the only fourth floor classroom in the ‘60s,” he said.

It had an odd design he recalled, kind of like an amphitheater with the teacher lower than the students.

“I know I was sitting in that classroom when the earthquake of 1964 happened,” Tasa said.

It was scary sitting up in that brick structure, but he said everybody made it out safely.

During a re-model of the school that was completed in 2003, the fourth floor was removed and all that remains now is the “attic-like” space Tasa encountered.

The trophies have now been polished and unpacked. They will be on display during the RHS Centennial Celebration on May 7, most likely in the gym.

The Centennial Committee and the Friends of Renton High School are trying to raise funds to purchase display cases to house some of these trophies.

For more information or to donate contact Terri Briere at tbriere@rentonhighschool.org.