This summer, as the DC campus transformation continues, the Wannan Gym will be razed to make room for a central outdoor gathering and activity space for students from all three divisions. The father-son duo for whom the gym is named embodied the spirit of this evolving space. In their combined 70 years of service, Pop and Charlie Wannan ’37 coached and taught more than 2,000 students across the Lower, Middle, and Upper Schools, always encouraging play and sports as ways of building community. 

CHARLES “POP” WANNAN 

In 1923, Thomas Sidwell hired a man with a pencil-thin mustache and a love of sports. Charles Wannan soon became known as “Pop” Wannan, serving as a father figure to many students young and old. The range of sports he coached ran the gamut: basketball, baseball, football, tennis, soccer, and wrestling. One of the founders of the Interscholastic Athletic Conference, he was dedicated to providing structure and support for the athletics program during the 37 years he served the School as coach and boys’ athletic director. By 1930, he was already an institution, earning a Quarterly yearbook dedication that year, and again in 1951. When Thomas Sidwell died six years later, Wannan was asked to speak at his memorial service. 

While he loved competition, Pop’s goal was always to encourage participation above all else. If 26 students showed up to play soccer, then the game became 13 vs. 13 rather than the standard 11 vs. 11. If that meant that players got fewer touches, then he would throw a dozen balls on the field, yelling, “Everybody, go, go, go!” He was compassionate and cared for all his students, athletically talented or not. “Nobody ever came in last in a race,” remembered one alum. “He was obviously ‘saving his energy’ for the next event.” 

CHARLIE WANNAN JR. ’37 

In addition to being a father figure for many, Pop was also an actual father to three Sidwell Friends students: Charlie ’37, Cliff ’39, and Jeanne ’44. It was Pop’s namesake who followed in his father’s footsteps to become a coach and athletic director at Sidwell Friends. As a student, Charlie played football, basketball, and baseball, serving as team captain and president of the Boys Athletic Association. 

After graduating from Sidwell Friends, Charlie joined the U.S. Navy during World War II and was wounded in the invasion of Normandy, receiving a Purple Heart before retiring from the service. Charlie was then hired to teach Lower School physical education as well as 5th and 6th grade science, dissecting chickens and teaching anatomy with “Susie Bones,” the resident skeleton. For a while, he was known as “Little Pop,” and the kindergartners could often be found trying to engage Charlie on the playground. He was 

When he died in 1978, less than a year after Pop, a student shared, “Charlie had a unique talent with kids of all ages, kinds, and sizes, teaching them the qualities of friendship, sportsmanship, generosity, and kindness through his warmth of personality.” Colleagues remembered how he lived out his teamwork ethic—if the baseball field needed cutting, Charlie would get the mower and cut the grass himself. 

Together, remembers one alum, “the Wannans were special because they cared about each of us not only as athletes but also as unique individuals to be taught and encouraged and praised. They understood that many of the most important lessons of life can be learned on a playing field.” 

WANNAN GYM 

When the Activities Building was constructed in 1958, alumni sought to recognize Pop with the creation of the Wannan Lounge. The centerpiece of that new building was the Kenworthy Gymnasium, a full-size gym with space for bleachers and a stage. Over time, however, the single court could not keep up with the demands of the growing student body. Head of School Earl Harrison remembered coaches coming into his office after tough losses, pointing out that if the team had only had space to practice more often, the outcome might have been different. 

Through the success of the Centennial campaign, in 1982 Sidwell Friends would finally get its auxiliary gym—as well as a new office for the School nurse—with the construction of Wannan Gym. With “the new gym,” as it was first called, the wrestling team finally had a dedicated space, and scheduling challenges with the basketball and volleyball programs were relieved. When Pearson Athletic Center was built in 2010, the presence of two full-sized courts meant that “The Wannan,” as it was later known, would become an auxiliary space, used for rainy-day recess, futsal practice, and aftercare. The old wrestling room was repurposed for batting cages in 2019. Phase Two of the original building plan, which involved building tennis courts on the roof, never came to pass. 

The building is scheduled to be razed this June, but it has already escaped destruction once. On a cold morning in 1994, an unoccupied bus warming its engine up the hill from Wannan Gym somehow slipped into reverse and sped down the hill toward the Middle School only to have its trajectory interrupted by a speed bump, which caused the bus to veer and ram into the north wall of the Wannan Gym, leaving a huge hole and brick pieces strewn across the floor. Fortunately, no one was injured. This summer, the demolition crew will pay special attention to the east-facing wall that contains the 1981 cornerstone. Behind it, we believe, is a time capsule, waiting for a future generation of Sidwellians to open and inspect. 

As we prepare to say goodbye, we will remember the Wannan Gym as the site for many all-school community events. Hundreds of students spent Founder’s Day on the gym’s climbing wall, with Outing Club advisor and legendary biology teacher Melanie Fields carefully belaying from below. Others will remember Wannan Gym as the place where they danced all night to a live band at the Black Student Union’s Go-Go. It was also home to the Next-to-New Sale, the secondhand sale that raised funds for financial aid, while giving community members a great bargain-hunting experience. 

In the fall of 2028, more than a century after Thomas Sidwell hired Pop Wannan and half a century after saying our final goodbyes to Pop and Charlie Wannan, Sidwell Friends will welcome the Lower School back to Wisconsin Avenue—to a campus that will be unified as it was during most of the Wannans’ many decades of service. It is fitting that the space where the gym that bore their name once stood will be used in a way that honors everything they stood for—a place for movement, for play, and for connecting as a true preK–12 community.