Monday, October 12, 2009

1955 OLYMPIAN - the Faculty



(pssst! click on any scanned item to make sense of it)

Here is another experiment in blog posting, I don’t think it qualifies to be called a noble experiment or anything like that.

This is part of the 1955 OLYMPIAN, the Marietta High School yearbook. If all goes well I plan to, like a ferret, dig through this year book pulling out (or robbing) things I think will interest people that read this blog that were at Marietta High School at this time.

Right now, in future posts of the 1955 OLYMPIAN I only have plans to do the pictures of the students, one class at a time, but who knows what fragment of my brain might sparkle and copy something else in the book.

I plan to do the same with faculty and students with the other MHS years books up through 1960 (don’t count!).

The faculty is the focused group in this post. Of all the teachers in it I remember something about each of them… some are pleasant memories and some are bitter.

James Bailey was the principal in my first year. He seemed to be a nice guy. I hated to read, not too many years ago, that he was killed in car wreck, going the wrong way He was going to drug store to get the medicine that would have probably prevented the accident, but evidently, got confused.




I don’t think normally I will have show the “good luck” notes in the beginning and each end of the book because that, I think, is private. The writer thought he or she was writing a note to me only, not to an international audience. Well, to make them feel better, the audience is not all that big anyway. The reason I have this page because it has a couple of people on it that read this blog.. and two people called me Chicken-Fat. This was 54 years ago! Did they know something I didn't?












14 comments:

Anonymous said...

ROCK, DID YOU START TO MHS A YEAR BEFORE I DID? I AM EATEN UP THAT YOU GOT GERI'S AUTOGRAPH BEFORE ME. OH WELL. I SHOULD HAVE GONE AHEAD AND MARRIED MISS ARNOLD. MRS. HOWELL WAS A VERY PRETTY LADY, AND STILL IS.MR. NEWSOME DID NOT CHANGE MUCH FROM 55 'TIL WE HAD LUNCH WITH HIM A FEW YEARS BACK.LITTLE GRAYER HAIR, BUT NOT MUCH MORE. HE WAS A HARD ASS IN DRAWING CLASS.STAY DRY.
PR

Eddie said...

PR,

"Don't count!" I said.

Well, that was ago, much water has went under the dam since then. Yes, I started a year before you. I failed the first year in the 8th grade. I blame my paper route that I had at the time, but also I should share a tiny bit of the blame myself by completely overjoyed that the teachers didn't seem to care if you turned in your work or not.

Anonymous said...

DALLAS STEWART SURE DID CARE. I LEARNED A WORD"CWM" IN HIS CLASS IN '55. I HAD NEVER HEARD THAT WORD BEFORE AND 2 WEEKS AGO IT CAME UP IN A CROSSWORD PUZZLE. CWM IS A LOW PLACE BETWEEN 2 MOUNTAINS.THANK GOD FOR MR. STEWART.
PR5

kenju said...

That's a good idea for blog posts, Eddie. Not many of my classmates read the blog, but I do see them on FB. Maybe I'll do some of that too.

Eddie said...

PR,
I didn't know that about CWM until just now. Although I slept through that part of Dallas' class an attentive red-headed boy took mental notes and relayed that knowledge to me over 50 years later. Now, Dallas should rest in peace.
By the way, one time before driving age several of us walked to Kennesaw Mountain and stopped at the Pure or Sinclair Station on Church St Extension and Kennesaw Avenue and Dallas waited on us. He lived behind the store. His parents owned it.
His sister Barbara lives in our neighborhood and was my supervisor when I was a Poll Volunteer. She is now suffering from senility.

Judy,
Thanks!
About 10% to 20% of my readers graduated from Marietta High about the same time I did, give or take a few years.
I say 10 to 20% It is according to when I check my counter. Sometimes it is as low as 10% and sometimes up to 25 or 30%.

Eddie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Eddie said...

Wait! I made an error. I said 10 to 20% graduated from Marietta near the same time I did. How would I know that? I wouldn't.
But I can say those numbers represent locals or previous locals (such as G and my cousins John and Johnny).

G said...

It was fun reading where they all went to college. Back then, I never gave a hoot. It amazes me that I can remember most their names, yet I can't remember what happened here last week.

Stewart made me cram in extra credit work before he would pass me. Whew!

Everyone sure looked older 54 years ago.

Ansler and McCampbell were cool dudes, weren't they. Ansler let us do most anything in his studyhall class.

Did either of you have Ms. Jarnagin? :(

G said...

PR, I wonder if I used the word "jolly" when I signed yours the following year. gawd!

Wish I could find my own yearbooks. I know there's a dark blue one packed in the garage.

Eddie said...

Geri,
The dark blue annual is 1960 a year after you graduated.
I think I had Miss Jaragan(?). She seemed very humble, pleasant, nice, and afraid she would do or say something wrong. But maybe I'm talking about someone else.

G said...

Well, they were all some shade of blue. I'll have to find the one I've got stashed in the garage.

Eddie said...

Well, one is gray, one is black, one is white and one is blue and white.

Postino said...

Something immediately jumps out at me from your yearbook: the marital status. Women are "Mrs. John Jones" or "Miss Jane Jones." I've always found that tradition of using the husband's name really curious. It seems to submerge the woman's identity.

Of course the men were all just "Mr." whether married or single.
Back in those days it seemed right but nowadays it's sexist.

Eddie said...

El,
Oh Hell,

(Sorry, I couldn't resist a bit of poetry there). You are right. I found that a problem when we invited an retired school teacher of ours, Mrs. Clara Howell to our GOBAG meeting. Was it Clara, Clare, or Clair. The 1955 yearbook called her Mrs. John Howell or whatever her spouse's first name... but finally, in the 1960 in named her correctly as Clara Howell.
The same goes for cemeteries. A lot of times, the wife is listed as Mrs. John Petty or whatever.