TELLING THE KOMET STORY

The Kearny Komet Museum

The Kearny Komet Museum will provide Kearny students and the Kearny community with the opportunity to discover and explore the school’s extraordinary history. It will provide an accessible showcase for the memorabilia that the Komet alumni have donated. It will tell the story of Stephen Watts Kearny High School and the impact of its legacy.

Join fellow Komet supporters

and help fund the new

Kearny Komet Museum.

We’re raising $50,000

to create the new museum.

So far we have raised

$10,119.74

towards our goal.

Help Preserve Kearny’s History

Please Make a Donation

The Kearny Komet Foundation is a registered 501(3)(c) nonprofit organization. Your donation may be tax deductible.

All donors will be honored on a “Founding Donors” plaque in the Library.

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$100 Donation

$500 Donation

$1000 Donation

Other Amount

Donation Amount

Sponsor a Display Case

The museum display cases can also be sponsored by individuals or organizations.

Each sponsored display case will have a plaque identifing the donor.

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72" Wall Display - $5100.00

These are the 72″ wide cases that will be arranged along the walls of the library.

Available 72″ wall display sponsorship opportunities – 4.

48" Floor Display - $4500.00

These are the 48″ wide cases that will be arranged in the center of the library.

Available 48″ floor display sponsorship opportunities – 4.

24" Tower Display - $2,600.00

These are the 24″ square tower displays that will be arranged in the center of the library.

Available 24″ tower display sponsorship opportunities – 1.

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Preserving, Sharing, and Honoring

In 2011 the Kearny High Alumni Association honored long time Kearny Drama instructor Jack Winans. As part of that celebration Kearny students created an exhibit highlighting the career of Mr. Winans, and the accomplishments of the drama department during his tenure. They used Kearny yearbooks and photos and documents provided by Mr. Winans and his former students as source material. The Kearny High Distinguished Komet Hall of Fame also began at that time. Students created exhibits that honored each of the inductees. Producing the exhibits for these events introduced students to the items in the school’s historical archives and provided the students with a direct link between Kearny’s present and it’s past.

Komets young and old

connect through the past.

Kearny students

take the initiative.

Student interest in Kearny’s history since then has been keen and ongoing. In 2015 that manifested itself with a student-curated exhibition of Kearny memorabilia at the Serra Mesa Library. The month-long exhibit was so well received that it was extended for an additional two months. A second exhibition honoring Kearny High School’s 75th anniversary was organized and displayed at the Serra Mesa library the following year. Each year students have continued to produce materials honoring the inductees at the annual Komet Hall of Fame ceremony. In 2021 students from the ASB curated and produced Kearny’s first Homecoming museum – a “pop-up” museum for one-night only – set up at the entrance to the Homecoming game. ASB students produced a second one for the 2023 Homecoming and they are preparing another one for the 2024 Homecoming.

All of these student supported events and exhibitions have one thing in common – they were temporary. The school is fortunate to have a tremendous collection of historical artifacts. What is doesn’t have is a place where those artifacts can easily be shared.

Can there be a permanent space

for a museum?

Let’s work together

to create one!

This past spring the Kearny High School ASB, the Kearny High School Historical Archives, the Kearny High School Administration, and the Kearny Komet Foundation, worked together to formulate plans for an exhibition space to be called “The Kearny Komet Museum”.

The museum will be located in the Kearny Library/Student Center. Permanent exhibition spaces positioned throughout the library will allow artifacts from Kearny’s Historical Archives to be viewed and appreciated. In addition to the historical displays, the library interior will be redesigned to encourage its use for student presentations, guest speakers, and community meetings. Everyone making use of the library will be surrounded by examples of Kearny’s longstanding contribution to its community.

The Library/Student Center

is the perfect place.

Now we will be able

to tell Kearny’s story.

The new museum will provide Kearny students and the Kearny community with the opportunity to discover and explore the school’s extraordinary history. It will tell the story of Stephen Watts Kearny High School and the ongoing impact of its legacy. It will provide an accessible showcase for the memorabilia that the Komet alumni have donated, and a place where their chapter of the Komet story can be told. It will connect the Komets of today with the Komets of yesterday.

But it will take some resources.

The museum will utilize four wall displays, four floor displays, two tower displays, and two video displays. These will need to be funded with help from the Kearny community. The Kearny Komet Foundation will facilitate the fundraising.

The projected Grand Opening is Homecoming 2025, to coincide with the completion of the new Administration building and the reopening of the campus.

We can make this happen.

Our history

will have a home.

When the Kearny Komet Museum opens in 2025 there will finally be a place where the items that many former Kearny students have donated back to the school can be displayed and honored. Jinx (Palma) Dickey (’62), Jeff Miller (’78), Vicki Hallman (’70), Jon Coffman (’74), Alice (Ponce) Myers (’48), Steve Grooms (’75), Larry Ahern (’61), Grace Delao (’75), and the family of Eleanor (Repaci) Baris (’47), among many other Komet alumni, have contributed a wide variety of historical documents and memorabilia. The families of Birt Slater, Jack Winans, and Evie Kohr have also added significant collections of documents and memorabilia that Coach Slater, Mr. Winans and Coach Kohr had saved from their years at Kearny. In addition, the archives include yearbooks, uniforms, the ASB History scrapbooks, the Choir scrapbooks, and even the Latin Club scrapbook from 1953, among many other items collected from the school. These contributions span the decades since Kearny’s first day in 1941, and they will now be able to be publicly displayed in the Komet Museum.