Triopia 50th Anniversary
2009 · Triopia Jr.-Sr. High School, Concord, Illinois
In 2009, Triopia marked the 50th anniversary of its founding, and Ken Bradbury set out to recover the story behind the school's distinctive name. This archive gathers the correspondence and source notes he collected from alumni and area families as he traced how three small western Illinois communities — Arenzville, Concord, and Chapin — came together as one school in 1959–60.
The folder is not a script but a piece of local history. As the records explain, the consolidation joined the limited resources of the three towns to give their students the best education possible. Before Triopia, Arenzville students attended the Zuschka School, named for John Zuschka, who donated the land; their high school teams were the Raiders, in purple and white. In the first year of consolidation the high school met at Chapin and the junior high at Arenzville, with shuttle buses ferrying students between towns.
The heart of the story is the naming itself. In the spring of 1959 a committee of soon-to-be seniors was asked to brainstorm a name, mascot, and colors, under two rules: nothing that favored one community over another, and no reuse of the predecessor teams' colors or nicknames. Bob Clark recalls how the "Tri" came easily for the three communities; digging through a Latin textbook from Homer Dahman's class, the students found oppidum, the word for town, and coined "Trioppidum," which became the more pronounceable Triopia. The students voted, and the Trojans, in columbia blue and white, were born. Alumni still remember a discarded joke suggestion — the "A/C Spark Plugs" (Arenzville/Chapin), in orange and black — which the coach reportedly hated.
Production Notes
This is a research and remembrance file rather than a stage production. Ken Bradbury collected first-hand recollections for Triopia's 50th anniversary (1959–2009) from Arenzville, Concord, and Chapin alumni and families, including Bob Clark, Becky Clark, Connie N., and others. Their letters, along with a history page from the Village of Arenzville's burgoo.org site and the words to the old Chapin High and Arenzville fight songs, document how the consolidated district and the name "Triopia" came to be. As several contributors note, the events were already fifty years old and no one remembered every detail with certainty — a fittingly human portrait of how a community names itself.