Three people who graduated from Springfield Public Schools will be inducted into the 2025 SPS Hall of Fame Thursday, October 16.
The district calls them "outstanding graduates." They include former Mayor Ken McClure; Warren Robinett, inventor of the action-adventure video game genre; and attorney and New York Times bestselling author, Nancy Allen.
McClure graduated from Parkview in 1968. Besides his four-term stint as mayor, McClure served as chief of staff to Missouri Governor Matt Blunt. He was recently appointed by Governor Mike Kehoe to serve on the Missouri Ethics Commission.
Robinett was a member of the 1970 Glendale High School senior class. In the late 70s as a young programmer at Atari, he created Adventure, a groundbreaking game that immersed players in a world of castles, dragons and mazes. He later co-founded The Learning Company, which produces educational software for children, and he developed virtual reality software to invent groundbreaking solutions for NASA, University of North Carolina and HP Labs.
Allen graduated from Glendale in 1974. She was one of the Springfield area’s first female criminal prosecutors and served as a Missouri assistant attorney general and assistant prosecutor. He taught law classes at Missouri State University and published the four-book Ozarks Mystery series. She has coauthored three bestselling legal thrillers with author, James Patterson.
They’ll be inducted into the SPS Hall of Fame during a lunch at noon Thursday.
