Students Archives

February 5, 2010February 5, 2010

Cars We Have Known and Loved

Steve Crowe’s Corvette

Bill and Sue Roussel do a great job of producing an email newsletter aimed at the Decade of the 50s. (Send an email to nunyab@sbcglobal.net to sign up for it.) Sue sent me a message that Bill’s brother, Jim Roussel, sent a bunch of pictures that were too big to go out in the newsletter and she asked if they would work for this site. I’m happy to have someone send me material, so I said I’d run them.

That reminded me that I had a picture of Steve Crowe ’65 and his new Stingray.

Gallery of Photos from Jim Roussel

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to step through the gallery.

Students from the 50s and their cars

Jim sent this list of students from the 50s and the cars they drove

BENNY HINTON: 50 DODGE, GREEN

BILL ROUSSEL: 50 OLDS, GREEN

TOMMY MEISNER: 56 DODGE D500, GRAY

KAREN WILSON: 56 DODGE

JIM PUTMAN: 56 PONTIAC, GREEN AND WHITE

SHIRLEY DAVIS: 55 PONTIAC CONV, RED AND WHITE

MIKE STEVENSON: 58 CHEVY CONV, BLACK AND WHITE

ROBBIE ROBISON: 59 RENAULT (SHARP CAR), BLACK

FRANCINE FORD: 55 CHEVY, PINK AND WHITE

CATFISH MOORE: 56 OLDS, RED AND WHITE

BILL CLARK: 56 OLDS, RED AND WHITE

SKEETER JONES: 56 DESOTA, BLACK AND WHITE

DICK NEEDLING: 50 BUICK (SIKESTON BOUND), GRAY AND BLACK

R. J. BOLLINGER: 50 MERCURY CONV, BLACK AND WHITE

NIP KELLEY: 57 BUICK CONV, RED AND WHITE

JOHNNY JONES: TWO 57 CHEVYS

TERRY HEUER: 57 PLYMOUTH FURY

BOB REDWINE: JAGUAR CONV (BOB WAS 14 OR 15 WHEN HE DROVE TO CENTRAL)

EDDIE CRITES: 1954 Mercury Green & White (Gas pedal would stick)

January 29, 2010May 7, 2021

Johnny Rabbitt Day – March 13, 1966

Johnny Rabbitt petition drive

This caption ran under this photo in The Southeast Missourian’s Youth Page on March 2, 1966:

Five members of Cape Girardeau’s Teen-Age Club hold a petition containing the signatures of more than 1,000 high school pupils asking Johnny Rabbit, KXOK disc jockey, to come here March 13 to emcee a dance at the Arena Building. Money from the dance will be used to pay Teen Town operating expenses previously underwritten by the United Fund. A TAC spokesman said that the teens would like to pay their own expenses so that United Fund money could be used for “underprivileged families.” The youths above are, from left, Bruce Ashby, son of Alfred Ashby, 1502 New Madrid; Steve Robert, son of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Robert, 1608 Perryville Rd.; Alan Hecht, son of Mr. and Mrs. Martin Hecht, 2416 Terry Hill; Miss Mary Wright, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Earnis Wright, 811 Perry, and Miss Jane McGinty, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Charles McGinty, 2435 Brookwood.

I was editor of the Youth Page at this time, and I used this photo as a four-column masthead for the page from time to time.

T or TT?

One thing that’s interesting is that both The Missourian and the photos show Johnny Rabbitt spelled with one T. All of the references I can find on the web show Rabbitt spelled with two Ts. I’ll stick with the two-T version.

Rabbitt’s real name was Don Pietromonaco. He was on the air at KXOK AM630, a 5,000-watt radio station, from 1963 to 1969, He died in 1997. Here’s a fairly good tribute site with more info.

I was a WLS Dick Biondi fan, myself

Dick Biondi (whose name I had never seen in print before writing this) came booming out of Chicago on 50,000-watt WLS. Go here to hear a clip of him. He is credited with being the first U.S. disc jockey to play the Beatles after he cranked up Love Me Do in February 1963. His signature song was On Top of a Pizza.

I had one of the first transistor radios to hit the market. It was a little bigger than a pack of cigarettes and used an earplug for a speaker. I can recall sitting at Camp Lewallen Boy Scout Camp listening to Biondi many a night. (I wore the radio when I was delivering newspapers, too. One day I walked up to a house to collect for the paper and the elderly woman looked at me, shook her head sadly, and said, “It’s a shame that a boy your age has lost his hearing.” She gave me a larger than usual tip, so I didn’t tell her it wasn’t a hearing aid.)

January 12, 2010April 1, 2012

Hootenanny Hits Central High School

I recognized Pep Foster in this picture, so I sent him a copy and asked, “Who are these people and what are they doing?”

Pep was kind enough to scratch his head a few times and fire back this message:

From left to right (the numbers after the names are class year, not ages):

Bill Withers 66

Gary Fisher 66

Preston ‘Pep’ Foster 64 (age barely 17)

J. Frank Moore 64

Ron Anderson 64

From the bulletin board, it would be Dale Williams Choir Room. The 1964 wall calendar says Student Council Talent Show / Hootenanny Spring 1964.

Gary and Pep did a duet of two Kingston Trio Songs. I remember that Bill and Jay and Ron all built Lutes or Guitars with Mr. Bush who lived in the 900 block of Perry Ave.

A few minutes later, Pep sent this amendment: Ken, on further checking, make that “Jay Moore“…a bow to those changes that have come with age. His Facebook is “Jay”. So be it!

I replied, That’s OK. Kenny morphed to Ken as soon as I crossed the Mississippi River headed out of state.

That’s what college is for, a chance to reinvent yourself.

Here’s a gallery of the group and their audience

As always, click on any image to make it bigger, then step through the gallery by clicking on the left and right sides.

Tribute to real folksingers

If you were a Peter, Paul & Mary fan, here’s a tribute I posted when Mary Travers died. I photographed them when they performed at Ohio University the day after Martin Luther King was gunned down in Memphis. They were a class act on stage and off.

December 29, 2009October 16, 2021

Some of My CHS Teachers Taught My Dad

Margi Whitright left a comment on my Helen Ketterer story: We loved these pictures of Miss Ketterer. Who went to Central and DIDN’T have to interact with her at some point? She was working at Central when my mother was a student there. Mother was born in 1914 and said Miss Ketterer was very young when she went to work there, obviously.

I pulled out my Dad’s 1931 Girardot.

Holy Cow! Helen Ketterer wasn’t the only faculty member that was there when my Dad was in high school. I recognized five names. [Update: Bill East pointed out one that I missed: Cornelia Gockel, who taught Business.]

Here are three pages from Dad’s 1931 Girardot

Note Irene Smith, above. We knew her as Irene Wright. Also Cornelia Gockel

Above page shows Miss Ketterer.

This page has Edna Haman, Mary Z. Reed and Clara Krueger (more about her later). I like the comment by math teacher J. Ross Adams: Hope we’ll all soon be riding airplanes, don’t you?

Miss Krueger’s retirement party in 1963

The Southeast Missourian’s Out of the Past column, produced by Sharon Sanders, contained this note:

75 years ago: May 24, 1927

Cape Girardeau Central High School Chapter of National Honor Society has been organized, with school receiving its charter last week; charter members of society are Mildred C. Johnson, Mary E. Drum, Ruth Berry, Lucy J. Vangilder, I. Duard Meyer, Dorothy H. Samuels, Vera E. Kasten, Aleene Kimmick, and Helen M. Ketterer; sponsor of local chapter is Clara Krueger.