Oak Park and River Forest High School

Oak Park and River Forest High School, or OPRF, is a public four-year high school located in Oak Park, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. It is the only school of Oak Park and River Forest District 200.

Founded in 1873, the current school building opened in 1907. A comprehensive college preparatory school, OPRF has had a long history of not only turning out alumni who have made contributions in a wide variety of fields, but have consistently been eminently notable in their fields. Perhaps the most notable is Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author Ernest Hemingway, whose writing career began at the school.

Throughout most of its history, the school has been a centerpiece of the Oak Park community, serving as host to a number of community events. Many of these events included lecturers and performances from many notable people from a variety of fields. Throughout the twentieth century, the school also was on the front lines of students rights issues ranging from fraternity/sorority membership in the early twentieth century, to the rights of homosexuals and African-Americans at the century's end.

Read more about Oak Park And River Forest High School:  History, Academics, Notable Staff

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    “The leaves are all dead on the ground,
    Save those that the oak is keeping”
    —Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    “Therefore awake! make haste, I say,
    And let us, without staying,
    All in our gowns of green so gay
    Into the Park a-maying!”
    —Unknown. Sister, Awake! (L. 9–12)

    “The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banks; many a poet’s stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “The moose will, perhaps, one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns ... to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
    —Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    “The most powerful lessons about ethics and morality do not come from school discussions or classes in character building. They come from family life where people treat one another with respect, consideration, and love.”
    —Neil Kurshan (20th century)