We first came together in the late summer of 1950 - Opening day of the 8th grade when we first walked up the steps to the imposing brick building in the Park.
It was Junior High School - We left the comfort and familiarity of our neighborhoods to pass into a world of strangers. We were filled with the same apprehension we had the first time mommy dropped us off for our first grade classes.
It was the year we met new friends, greeted puberty and melded into the Class of 1955.
At Junior Olympics time we kept our loyalty to the old schools - Franklin, Irving, Harrison, Horace Mann, Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Washington and Wilson.
Even today, those schools, and the teachers, and the friends we made are part of our memory - and provide a source of friendly rivalry.
Our old High School became Junior High; and now it's a Middle School. Our Junior High is now the Administration Building for The Board of Education. Harrison and Irving, both completely gone. Robert E. Lee is now a Church. Franklin is closed; Washington, an ‘alternative school'. Wilson, a childhood development center. Horace Mann and Jefferson the only to survive the way we knew them - our homes away from home for seven years.
If not ‘Greatest Class That Ever Was', we were one of the most fortunate!.
We never knew depression - too young for Korea - most of us too old for Viet Nam.
When we walked across the stage of the Municipal Auditorium and took our diplomas from the hand of W.H. Williams, the President of the Board of Education, we marched hopefully into the world where there was no war, no inflation, no unemployment, low interest rates and low taxes. A world full of opportunity, with the promise that if we you could ever make $100.00 a week security was assured.
We just knew that those things would last forever.
Turmoil was to come later.
Though each of us now have other lives; new friends; new family and other interests our high school years will forever be a part of us.
Many things change, but there is one permanency - We are the Class of 1955!
- Add Your Memory Word to the List!
- 2000 - Shawnee High School Class of 1955 Reunion Committee
