Bearden High School - Echo Yearbook (Knoxville, TN)

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Table of Contents Activities ..................................... 11 Athletics ...................................... 63 Personalities....................................83 Advertising.................................... 161 1969 High School Tennessee

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Life at Bearden Takes Many Faces Echo Bearden Knoxville

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 I am youth and I am a paradox. I cloak my emotions in the garb of unconcern. If I seem indifferent, it is because I feel too deeply. If I seem boastful, it is to cover my shortcomings. My exuberance is a shield of my limitations. I am a youth and I long to be different, stronger, more honest, more feeling, more alive than other men. I am youth and I long to be a conformist ... to dress, act and talk like the crowd. I am a realist. Be honest with me; I can sense hypocrisy and I loathe it. I cannot con-, done a leader who does not know the way, show the way, go the way. I am an idealist. I will act on principle for its sake alone. I am a child. Sixteen does not make me too old to climb on my father's lap when my castles in the sky come tumbling down. I am an age of mountainous love and deep despair. I am unaware of any real indifference. The pain of all creatures is personal to me. I burn with a rising tide of fury at a restroom sign, 'White Only'. I feel needed and though the cynic says I am too precious a gift to waste on the young, who else would accept my turbulent, bittersweet, dreaming ways? Yes, I am youth and I am a paradox; a contradiction to myself; an enigma to others; and yet, I am the eternal hope of the world. I am the key to the future . . . cherish me! 4