Central High School students Archives

March 31, 2013April 2, 2013

Now Beautify Central (NBC) Week

“Barrelling Along: Centralites “barrelled” along this week, planting shrubs, cleaning seats and picking up litter as part of NBC (Now Beautify Central) Week,” read the caption on The Missourian’s Youth Page April 29, 1967. “Busily painting the school’s trash barrels are, from left, Jim Froemsdorf (committee chairman), son of Mr. and Mrs. Martin Froemsdorf, 1619 Schivally; Gene Feuerhahn, son of Mr. and Mrs. Ray Feuerhahn, 1721 Perryville road, and Rommie Holland, son of Mr. and Mrs. Dale Holland, 1509 East Riverside.”

Planting shrubs

One guy digging, one guy thinking about digging, one guy supervising. The sign, by the way, was a gift of the Class of 1965. I pushed for something more academic, like books for the library, but we ended up with a sign that disappeared after a relatively short number of years. Young whippersnappers should note the absence of any air conditioning units sticking out of the windows. When it turned hot, we studied hot. Fortunately, only freshmen had to chop wood to warm the classrooms in the winter.

Scavenger hunt

These students are on a hunt for any salvageable pieces of gum stuck to the seats. The group in the back appears to be hot on the trail of a good piece. The foreground students seem a bit less enthusiastic.

Cheerleader tryouts

I must have walked through the gym during cheerleader tryouts because it’s on the same roll as the NBC photos. That might be PE teacher Ellen Towse on the right. The man in the middle might be Calvin Chapman.

The picture is pretty much unremarkable, but I DO sort of like the shadows on the floor.

Housekeeping Note

Some of you have accused me of slacking off the past few days because you haven’t gotten an email in the morning telling you that there is new content. For some strange reason, the program that sends those out has hiccuped. Son Matt and I have done everything but sacrifice a chicken to get it going. I hope it wakes up in the morning. Be assured that you can go directly to the site without me nudging you. Sorry for the inconvenience.

March 14, 2013

The Era of Big Hair

Remember the Era of Big Hair? This negative sleeve had a number of different assignments in it, along with a cryptic “Linda M.” After consulting with the Central High School yearbook and Wife Lila, I’m going to guess it’s Linda McGregor, who was a sophomore in the 1965 Girardot.

This must have been some kind of sporting event because both girls have Tiger emblems.

Tomfoolery?

The woman at the left doesn’t seem to approve of whatever hijinks and tomfoolery are going on.

Mystery girl

I was willing to take a stab at Linda, but I don’t have a clue who her friend is. Anyone? Click on the photos to make them larger if that helps.

You’d think a photographer would have a ready-made excuse to collect names and phone numbers from cute girls, but my level of social self-ineptitude kept me from obtaining that information for personal use, and I didn’t bother to ID anyone who wasn’t going to make me five bucks in the paper.

December 4, 2012

Riding the Bus

This shot of kids boarding the bus on the south side of Central High School in 1966 has some interesting things in the background. First off, Millikan Car lot is loaded with cars. Griff’s Burger Bar is just out of the frame. There’s a billboard pitching Suedekum and Son Hardware. The Sinclair Dino gasoline in Cape Girardeau sign is for Huckstep Oil Company.

In the far background you can see students walking home down Caruthers.

Standing room only

I remember some days that the bus had late riders standing in the aisle, but I didn’t think it was THIS crowded. I think the Class of 66 might have been bigger than the Class of 65, so that would explain it.

I didn’t mind riding the bus. The driver was a SEMO student picking up some spare money. He was a nice guy; in fact he and his girlfriend would come by the house some evenings and I would help them with their homework and provide them reference materials. I think he was writing some papers on topics we covered in debate.

Bright and early

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like the bus came by the house at an ungodly hour, like 7 a.m. I had a curious study routine. I found out that if I did my homework before going to bed that I would drag it out and procrastinate for hours.

If, on the other hand, I calculated about how long I thought it would take me to do the homework and got up, leaving just enough time to do it, eat breakfast and get dressed before the bus got there, I could get a decent night’s sleep. It was the classic adage of “A task will expand to occupy all of the time available to it.” Seeing that deadline marching toward me allowed me to focus on the job, something that I always liked about the news business.

When I moved to North Carolina, I was surprised to see they allowed high school students to be bus drivers. The driver would take his (it was a guy thing) bus home at the end of the route and start out from home at the start of the next day. I think the safety record was amazing. I don’t recall ever working a wreck involving a student driver, which is pretty amazing, considering some of the roads they had to go on.

October 1, 2012January 29, 2016

Decorating the Gym

No telling what dance these students were preparing for. I started to put names to faces, but realized the only one I was sure of was Jim Stone. These look like they were shot for The Tiger or The Girardot, but I don’t think any of them were ever published. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Since Jim was Class of 1965, it was unlikely he was decorating for the Class of ’66. Ditto the Class of 1967 Senior Prom.

Where are the coaches?

I can’t believe there’s no coach around to complain about abuse of hoop. When we visited Central at the last reunion, we kept expecting someone to chastise us for walking across the basketball court in our STREET shoes. Of course, by 2010, it was a junior high school and it was the practice gym, so maybe nobody cared.

Okeechobee High School Prom

I wish I had been able to put my hands on a photo story I shot at the Okeechobee High School Prom. I had a shot very similar to this in it. I decided I wanted to shoot an old-fashioned prom held in a gym, not a fancy coastal one held at the Flagler Museum or someplace equally high falutin’.

Okeechobee is a rural community about an hour west of West Palm Beach and on the north rim of Lake Okeechobee. I liked it because it had real trees and real people living there.

The two biggest industries were cattle and dairy farming and supporting retirees who came from the Midwest for the bass fishing. The high school advisor was very protective of her students. “I don’t want you coming out here and making these kids look like a bunch of hicks. This is a big deal for them.:”

I assured her that wasn’t my style and that I had grown up in a town not much bigger than Okeechobee.

I had to sell the story

My next task was to “sell” the story. Photographers worked for both the conservative afternoon paper, The Evening Times, and the liberal morning paper, The Palm Beach Post. The Post generally gave us much better picture play, so it was my first stop. The features editor was interested and threw out the name of the reporter he was thinking about assigning to do the words. His approach would have been exactly the one the advisor feared, so I said that I’d get back with him.

The two newspapers were separated by a walkway and a five-foot wall that was painted, we said, affectionately, Post-Times Puke Green. I crossed over.

The Times, being the underdog, liked to stick it to The Post whenever it could, so its feature editor loved the idea of snatching a good story out from under the morning paper. The only problem was they didn’t want to send a reporter. No problem, I said, give me a section front and I’ll shoot the pictures, write the copy and lay it out.

It was a blast. The student body was divided into the hippies and the cowboys. I knew immediately that I had made the right choice in not having The Post’s writer come out. He wouldn’t have been able to resist turning the kids into caricatures. I ended up with a couple of shots I like to this day. The best part was the advisor was happy when she saw the paper. I didn’t want to disappoint her.