Students at Millard Lefler Junior High performed for Richard Nixon, did push-ups with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and met author Walter Dean Myers. They constructed sheds and poured concrete, traveled across the country, and won multiple awards. They were taught by an aviator, a martial artist, and the grandson of an escaped slave. They have been a junior high and a middle school, and have hosted kindergarteners and nursing students. They have rebranded and adapted, over and over again, to meet the changing needs of students in a changing world. This is the story of the first seventy years of a middle school in the middle of a city in middle America.