Photo courtesy of dickoattsmusic.com
The third induction class for the Greene County High School Fine Arts Hall of Fame was recently announced.
Activities Director David Wright says the 2025 Induction Class includes five individuals, ranging from 1971 through 2016. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio one of the inductees who graduated in 1971 and comes from a well-known musical family is Dick Oatts.
“He’s a professional jazz musician, a saxophone player, he’s a member of Grammy award winning groups, and has over 120 albums in his belt, and then he was a three-year All-Stater on two different instruments when he was in high school.”
Wright notes the second inductee for the 2025 Hall of Fame Class is Katy (Von Ahsen) Gordon, who graduated in 1998 and was the first Jefferson-based student to be nominated for All-State Speech all four years of high school. Wright says next is 2005 graduate Carl Rowles, who was a three-time All-State selection on trumpet, and is currently the band director at Cedar Rapids-Jefferson High School.
Wright points out the 2010 graduate Katie Rice is the next inductee. He states that she was a two-time All-State Band for clarinet, and is currently the Assistant Professor of Clarinet at Washington State. Wright reveals the final inductee is the 2016 graduate David (Peterson) Ayala and was a three-time All-State Vocalist, along with being the first member of the Fine Arts Hall of Fame for visual arts, winning Best of Show at the high school conference festival and earned a college degree in visual arts. He talks about why the selection committee wanted to involve visual arts.
“Visual arts is a little more difficult because there’s not a state organization where you have like, All-State Visual Arts. That might be reserve more for people that since they got out of high school went on to become well-known artists or visual artists, or whatever it might be. That one’s a little more difficult, a little more subjective than what the vocal, and band, and speech are.”
The Fine Arts Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will take place on Saturday, May 10th at 6:30pm in the high school auditorium.