Bedford High School - Peaks Yearbook (Bedford, VA)

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Class Prophecy Have you, the readers of this prophecy, ever been to the mysterious land where the snake enchanter, Alladin and his lamp, and the genu originated? I just returned from that land, India, to tell the most fantastic adventure I have ever experienced. Six months ago I was on my annual vacation in India. Walking along a city street, I suddenly saw a small child falling from a tree. I rushed to her, picked her up and carried her inside the nearest building, which was large and weird. I was met at the door by an old lady, and I quickly told her about the accident. Together we came to the conclusion that her little grand-daughter was merely frightened from the fall. The old lady told me she was Mrs. Yun, the queen of India, and she insisted that she repay me for what I had done. I followed her into a candle-lit room and she presented me with the most magnificent maroon rug I had ever seen. I didn’t believe her when she stated, “This is a magic carpet that will take you anyplace you wish.” Seeing my doubts she added, “Why don’t you let it take you to see each of your classmates, since you say you haven’t seen many of them since the night of graduation, June 3, 1955. After much persuading I sat upon the carpet, and away I flew. As I floated over Bedford High School’s athletic field, I noticed Peggy Hopkins, the girls’ physical education instructor, teaching the freshman class the fundamentals of soccer; it looked as if they were having the same success we did when we were freshmen. Miss Janie Garraghty and Mrs. Jacqueline Harper Dooley, elementary teachers, were leading their children to the high school to see a movie pertaining to their studies. Floating over the high tree tops, I found L. D. Lynch, who was supposed to be the county sanitation engineer, snoozing under the shade of a big maple tree! On down town my magic carpet speeded. Instantly I recognized Doris Crawford Croft sobbing over another of her father’s demolished cars. She had just smashed it against a telephone pole on West Main Street. Doris kept books for her father at Lake Motors, until this accident. I bought a Bedford Democrat and from it learned the vocations of many of my classmates. Joy Mae Wilkerson was a successful office manager of the Southern Flavoring Company. Thelma Edwards was a nurse in a Richmond hospital. The state cooking award had been presented to Mary Lois Hardy by the President of the United States. Jimmy Marsh and Ned Overstreet were soon to begin their electrical engineering careers at the General Electric Plant in Roanoke. Racing through the sky toward Lynchburg, I noticed a store with a big sign—‘‘Buy Tonight; Buy at Saferight.” The name Saferight rang a bell; and as I passed the store, Phyllis Saferight, partnership owner with her Dad, was busily gathering groceries for Shirley Leftwich, a stenographer for one of Bedford’s prominent lawyers. Margaret Lemon was also in the store, telling the gossip she heard during her day as a telephone operator. As I was cruising past a large window of E. C. Glass High School, I saw Betty Ruth Bowling applying the knowledge she had obtained at Longwood College. She was rapidly typing a letter, with the aid of a dictaphone, to Joanne Burnette of Daytona Beach, Florida, to see if she would appear on the Glass Variety Show. Miss Burnette was the vocalist at one of Daytona’s aristocratic hotels. Miss Louise Fizer and Miss Alice Haynes became secretaries for Craddock-Terry Shoe Company immediately after they graduated from Phillip’s Secretarial College. Someone told me that both of these girls are so tired of seeing and hearing about shoes that they often go to work barefooted! Circling into North Carolina, I saw Berkley Comer on a hillside near Charlotte. He was carrying a huge sack of herbs on his back. Several days later I saw in the paper that Berkley was an expert hair dyer, and that he uses the herbs to make special dyes. At the present time he is a blond. In Raleigh County Carl Wells and Harden Atkinson have adjoining farms. As my carpet silently swept over them I heard them discussing whether to thrash or to combine their wheat for the oncoming year. Crossing over Myrtle Beach, I noticed Mer- maid Nancy Johnson teaching swimming to some pupils on vacation there. Nancy is a recreational leader in vacation resorts each summer. Betty Ray Lazenby, medical secretary for Dr. Billy Driscoll, is making a study of peaches in Georgia. Her adviser there is an expert on the subject, and she reports that she never knew there was so much to learn about “peaches”! As I neared New York I wondered how many of the seniors went back there to live after our senior trip. Curiosity got the best of me; I bought a New York paper to glance through it and see if any of our class was mentioned. I was astonished to find that Anne Johnson, still not knowing French well, had opened the Mademoi- selle Angele Dress Shop. Gene Ryder, chief engineer at Radio City, was

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Senior Play OUKSO AR TSSwWERE YOUNG AND GAY, Presented by)......2.:.... THE C1ass OF 1955 Directed by Miss Vircinta Rurr anp Miss JosEPHINE Biss CAST SST ee cL Cl Sean ag ON ot ek a See a Dae Se snag sad is ao ahaa SR HarpEN ATKINSON RULES. EOTAVST Soe EE lace a a a Nancy JOHNSON (Crsysave Hey (OMG fe eRe SN RES WOO Ce ERA ts RN eee reg Linpa Boyer UGS USNS in: 2G oA Nya eh MS ieee ry ae re a Bitt Driscouu + Fille PAROS eile roy ey ict ne Ae a ELIZABETH Burks ESC RR a ren ernie Ua FO Rok 0th Cee Nep OVERSTREET HONOREES 5 each Grin ane Soa eRe ge nas eke, ae THELMA Epwarps TCR Vil CCl Seen eA eR AE 9 Saeco Me a AR cee, dh eh ta Da.uas PINION ENG RPTBREND o.3 ec Fo Sine aE ORR AGE a Neti ct a Cart WELLS inlW eek? Tle: I kelevees: Oooils Dae een eee ee a rr HELEN Nance SE eelnLs AU Taper pene Cet mins nr eRe ANT Se Se WR, ANNE DENTON COM LCL. Vo Vato mn ee ete er een. char, He Gar. Be ac ok ee EUGENE RYDER WY DYSS Re ex, 5 alattec, eek ee Race ae nr ee ee Betty Bow Linc PC reSc meine tt rare ene OM ek Me nave Shh wh a ddaty aa Betty Ray LazEnBy ah Bays awe eee MEGS old CoS 8 20 a SN EL a JACQUELINE HarPER NOR ICUteL erlang OTOL Kets Mere Mia ce © REY A c.g evans eal ANNE JOHNSON VT CLO We CElCat Chama cat eer sect ee ee ta ee), Oe aes Sut Ray OVERSTREET by NOPSIS SOF (PEAY Midst tender admonitions from Mrs. Skinner and hilarious comments from her husband, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough, two American college girls of the 1920’s, set sail for Paris. Emily and Cornelia play to pose as suave cosmopolitans on the trip; but while Cornelia is por- traying a woman in black, Emily is rushing around putting cookies in the lifeboats. Leo and Dick, handsome Harvard medical students, attempt to take care of these astonishing girls; but they find almost more than they can handle when Cornelia gets the measles just as the ship docks in France. This paves the way for the girls’ experiences in France, which include Cornelia’s rather trying times with an exploding gas meter and a temperamental French actor. Fortunately, Cornelia’s parents arrive just in time to dispose of the actor and all the other troubles.

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Class Prophecy being honored at the Waldorf because he had found a short circuit in a large and expensive TV camera. He was the only man out of 36 to find the camera’s trouble. Mrs. Ryder, former Anne Denton, was happily at home teaching their four children a Sunday School lesson. Glenn Padgett was also being honored at the Waldorf for being an outstanding foreman at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. A great dramatist and vocalist, Linda Boyer, was to have a premier opening at the Paramount soon. She was starring in the play ““Tonio and Lindaiet”’, the predicted smash-hit. I could find no other information about any Bedford people in the New York paper, so I rode my carpet over New York’s Sampson Air Force Base. Dale Wilson, Ray Overstreet and David Abbott were getting their jets ready for flight. Then I saw Tommy Abbott, one of the jet pilots, ready to take off, so on my magic carpet I glided along with him to Rockefeller Center. In a gigantic office sat Tommy Foster, in action asa C. P. A. He had been trying for hours to find a bookkeeping error Shirley Noell had made. Miss Noell was a private secretary for Dr. Dallas Pinion, the best-known doctor in New York City. My magic carpet took me past St. Louis, Missouri, where Nancy Croft Gray was keeping house for her husband in the Air Force. Then on I glided to California, where Frank Dooley was an artist for Walt Disney Studio. Scientist Elizabeth Burks had only a few minor tests to make before she let the public know the positive cure of imaginary ailments. She has been working on the test to cure this disease since she first began to study it at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, in Lynchburg, Virginia. William Eubank, the class’s only sailor, set sail on a destroyer for a trip around the world. This is the second time since William has been in the Navy that he has made this trip. Now that my journey was completed, I hastened back to India to give my magic carpet back to the original owner, Mrs. Yun. With these memories fresh in my mind, I wrote them down to put in this prophecy, so that you might learn what happened to the Class Of 55: Class Prophet HELEN NANCE