and staff from other U.S. Departments. It was convenient to the St. Petersburg across the Rhine River where HICOG was physically located. With the arrival of HICOG also came the construction of housing for the Americans and a school for their children. Plittersdorfwas the HICOG housing area for Americans; there were other HICOG housing areas for German Embassy staff in and the . Bonn was in the British Occupation Zone and not the American Occupation Zone, which was further south. Thus it fell to the U.S. Department of State to build and run the school. Later the Department of State maintained its ownership of the school but made use of the U.S. Department of Defense's program that ran a worldwide network of schools associated with U.S. military bases. High school opening Prior to the opening of BAHS in 1971, students of high school age attended the U.S. Department of Defense schools in Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and even Bitburg. They took a U.S. Embassy bus to these schools on Sunday evening and stayed in dormitories during the week, returning to Plittersdorf on Friday afternoon. Unlike Berlin, Bonn had no particular international community, but in the Post-War period and throughout the Cold War, it was a key European capital. Thus BAHS not only served the U.S. Embassy in Bonn, but also drew students from Bonn's diplomatic community and international companies. For example, the 55 students of the Class of 1974 included eleven nationalities from five continents. Students from countries in conflict with each other sometimes attended and studied side by side at either BAHS or the BAES. Closing BAHS closed in 1997 following the transition of the capital of unified Germany to Berlin on 3 October 1990. Bonn International School opened in the same facilities as BAHS in autumn 1997, eventually demolishing and rebuilding the physical plant entirely. Mascot and school song The Bonn American High School sports teams were known as the "Crusaders". Their mascot was Clarence, a suit of armor now in the archives of the American Overseas Schools Historical Society in Wichita, Kansas. The school colors were red and white, although initially letter jackets were black with white sleeves. The school song was sung to the tune of the University of Notre Dame's fight song. Sports BAHS was in the Benenor Conference, which was made up of DoDDs and NATO schools in Belgium, The Netherlands, and Northern Germany. Frequent opponents