Oscar F. Smith High School

Oscar F. Smith High School (also known as Smith High or OSHS) is a public high school with an enrollment of approximately 2,200 students in grades 9-12. The school is located on a campus in the Greenbrier West area of the city of Chesapeake, Virginia, United States. History A new brick building for the school was built on Rodgers Street in South Norfolk, to replace the aging South Norfolk High School. When South Norfolk merged with Norfolk County to form the city of Chesapeake in 1963, Smith High became part of the new city. The school opened in 1954 and was named after Oscar Frommel Smith (25 October 1891 – 4 May 1950), a Hampton Roads fertilizer magnate and civic leader, who had recently died and whose widow, Ruth, offered the school the $50,000 if it would name the new stadium after her husband. The city council decided that not only the stadium, but the whole school would be named after him. In 1955 Ruth Smith donated $1,200 the school board to go toward a radio station permit. This resulted in the radio station with callsign WFOS - which stands for "W Frommel Oscar Smith" - founded at the high school and currently located at the Chesapeake Center for Science and Technology, transmitting since 1973 on frequency 88.7 FM MHz for the Southside of Hampton Roads and via radio stream online. WFOS features Blues, Beach, Oldies, R&B and a wide variety of other music, as well as national and local news. The school moved to its current location on Great Bridge Boulevard and Tiger Drive in Chesapeake's Greenbrier section in 1994. After the move the school kept its old name, and the Rodgers Street building became Oscar F. Smith Middle School. Therefore, Oscar Frommel Smith is the only person to be the namesake of two Chesapeake schools.