Archbishop Ryan High School students were held hostage on this week in Philly history

A lanky man wearing a long, dark coat walked into a high school disciplinarian’s office ready to really make America great again.

Around 1 p.m. on Dec. 9, 1985, 22-year-old Steven Gold entered Archbishop Ryan with a knife and a gun.

And he quickly took seven hostages — five students, a secretary, and the assistant dean of students.

Twenty minutes later he sent one of the students to get him a soda, and the student actually thought about going back before police nabbed him.

Around 2 p.m. Gold spoke with police by phone, and demanded President Ronald Reagan — who first ran on the Make America Great Again campaign slogan — resign from office.

And turn over leadership of the country to Gold, who said he wanted to be called the Antichrist.

In a statement that was read to the press, Gold wrote:

“Either choose my leadership, or accept the death of America.”

Back then, the Catholic high school was separated into two segregated schools: the boys’ school in the south wing, and the girls’ school in the north wing.

Gold took the hostages in the boys’ wing. Shortly afterward, the 1,950 male students were dismissed. They walked out just as the 2,150 female students were leaving for the day on a shortened schedule. Together, boys and girls filed calmly out of the massive, three-story school building at Academy Road and Chalfont Drive.

About an hour into the standoff, Gold let the secretary go after learning she was a mother of four. Shortly afterward he traded the assistant dean for a food order, leaving only three male students as hostages.

Around 7 p.m., a police negotiator briefly entered the disciplinarian’s office.

Gold, who had recently stopped taking medication for paranoid delusions, held his pistol to the head of one student and threatened to kill all of the students if his demands were not met.

Around 8:30 p.m., those students had had enough.

Gold told the negotiator on the phone that he would let two of the students go, and then the officer heard “a commotion and a lot of screaming” on the other end of the phone.

The students decided the gun Gold was brandishing was a fake.

So in good, old-fashioned Northeast Philly fashion, they jumped him. And it turned out they were right: The gun was a starter’s pistol, and it was loaded with blanks.

The students overpowered Gold, and held him down until the stakeout officers rushed in and put an end to the standoff after more than seven hours.