East Rockaway High School - Rock Yearbook (East Rockaway, NY)

Page 17 text:

FACULTY No more pencils, no more books. No more teachers' sassy looks! First Row: Miss Duffy, Mrs. Symonds, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Mosks, Mrs. Joy, Mrs. Yotter, Mrs. Nelson. Mrs. Winters. Second Row: Mr. Hermanson, Dr. Bormann. Mrs. Reilly. Miss Hickman. Miss Olson. Mrs. Offer, Miss Lorenz, Miss Roisman, Miss Tobin, Mr. Halford, Mr. Prunhuber. Once upon a time this was our typical chant. Today we are seniors looking back on our many school years, and although we may not miss the pencils and books, we all feel that we shall miss immeasurably the teachers and their sassy looks. No longer do we dread these second parents, for we feel that we shall be leaving a second home, our school. We shall never forget: Miss Duffy's attempts to pound into our heads that elipses have curved comers, not square ones; Mr. Fordham telling chorus members to meet their boyfriends elsewhere so he could have rehearsals instead of a youth center on Monday nights; Mr. Halford's calm manner of banging heads together when he couldn't quiet his classes any other way; Mrs. Howard's nonchalant remarks that kept English IV in hysterics; Miss Irish's face the day Ezra walked coolly into the nurse's room during the girls' physical examinations; Miss Lorenz's homeroom piled high with white elephants for the senior sale; the ease with which Mrs. Meske was able to teach us amo ; Mrs. Nelson's advice on good grooming—but jeans and our dads' shirts were so comfortable; the cheery grin that Mr. Prunhuber always had for us; the door to Mrs. Reilly’s room always sticking because of our gum parked outside the room; poor, poor Miss Reisman, who prayed every night (between knitting socks) for new typewriters; the extent of an English teacher's vocabulary as displayed the day Lyn dropped a chair on Mr. Sackman's foot; Mrs. Symonds and her young gremlins who did everything but climb up the walls; Miss Tobin's telling her study hall students. Callaos. estudiantes, which was Greek to most of us; the hall cops trying to slow Mrs. Winters down because they mistook her for one of the students; the time we almost had Mrs. Yetter believing that Leif Ericson discovered this square world of ours. We shall always appreciate: Miss Hickman's way of watching over us and helping us when we needed an extra lift; Mr. Judd s advice that clean sportsmanship is the best sportsmanship; Miss McCord's understanding manner and sense of fair play that helped us to be both good winners and good losers; Mrs. Offer's endless patience during history debates. We shall miss: worrying about Herm mixing up H SOj as though it were HoO; the drooly ice cream cakes which' Mrs. Joy brought to special”Hi-Y meetings; Miss Olson telling us a straight line is the shortest distance between two points and then having to spend periods listening to the theories of students who believed in short cuts; Mr. Ruckdeschel's advice on how to take a car apart and put it together again without any left-overs. (Whatever will happen to the faculty's cars after our boys leave?) Never will we forget our faculty. They were always there when we n needed the most. It will be hard for us to leave these wonderful men and women of East Rockaway High.

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OFFICE STAFF Here are the office staff and our main office. This room is the center of all school business. Mrs. Lee and Miss Schempp keep all school funds and accounts in order, and record excuses and latenesses. (Many are the trips home a poor student has to make because of forgotten excuses!) All day long students swarm into this office. Some come for lost articles, some for fund slips, some for passes, and quite a few for 43-minute stretches on those hard chairs. (Wondering what's in store for one is just as uncomfortable as sitting on those chairs, believe us, Cap'n Rox.) The other rooms are the offices of Dr. Bormann and Dr. Studwell. Our school is run under their able guidance and direction. They have helped us in more ways than anyone can realize, and our class is very grateful to them for all they have done for us. Left to Right: Dr. Bormann. Mr . Loo, Dr. Studwell. Miss Schempp PARENT-TEACHER ASSOCIATION The third Thursday of every month marks the date of the Parent-Teachers' Association meetings. The P. T. A. is the organization where teachers and parents become better acquainted and discuss ways in which they can help both the school and the students. The officers of the P. T. A. are Mr. George Schuler, president; Mrs. O. Victor Gerth, first vice-president; Mrs. James Gambee, second vice-president; Mrs. Gilbert Meske, treasurer; Mrs. Krohn, corresponding secretary; Miss Jane Duffy, later, Miss Agnes Hickman, recording secretary; and Miss Gladys Olson, financial secretary. Programs of the P. T. A. are always interesting and attendance at them is usually good. This is one organization which should be complimented for what it tries to do for the school, Cap'n Rox. Sealed: Mrs. Schuler. Mrs. Cooke. Miss Hickman. Mrs. Gerth. Mrs. Krohn. Standing: Mr. Meske, Dr. Bormann, Mr. Gambee, Dr. Studwell. Mr. Sherman. Mr. Smith. Mr. Clark. Mr. Schuler.

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After Cap'n Rox told us about our school he went on with the history of our town. We could hardly believe the tales that he related to us. Rohanowahahal So that was our town's first name. And who would ever guess that our cognomen was once Clinktown. This verifies the fact lhat our town dates back to the time of the Indians, who gave us our first name. Back in the middle of the seventeenth century, the old Indian name was anglicized into Rockaway. This included from what is now Rockaway Beach to the town of Hempstead, a thriving little settlement. Rockaway was then subdivided into two parts. We became Near Rockaway because of our nearness to Hempstead; the other part Far Rockaway. a name that still remains. With the dawn of the American Revolution, Near Rockaway flared into stirring drama. From 1775 onward, all western Long Island was divided between two factions, one remaining loyal to the British crown, and the other favoring American independence. In Near Rockaway the loyalists, or tories, were especially strong. In May 1776, the plot began to thicken in the struggle between the Patroits and Tories at Rockaway. Tory sloops sailed the channels off Rockaway to bring back arms from British men-o'-war anchored off shore, but the war ended and the Tories faded into oblivion. Near Rockaway was still flourishing at the out-break of the War of 1812 when the Post Office Department ordered its name changed to East Rockaway. Our town saw some real action in this war. A group of East Rockaway men were sent with a company to guard Hog's Inlet, now East Rockaway Inlet, from an expected British landing party, which had planned to seize the inlet and hamper commerce. In East Rockaway, the nearest port to the ocean, a life saving corps was established to aid ships in distress. In midwinter weather in 1836, the ''Bristol'' and the ''Mexico'' were wrecked on the shoals off Long Beach. Mang people died, and it fell to the lot of East Rockaway seamen to bury them. Money found on the bodies was used to purchase a monument to their memory in the old Sand Hole cementery. In the early eighteen hundred's. East Rockaway gave promise of being the South Shore's largest village. It began to develop away from the ordinary run of straggling farms and meadowland, and reached the peak of its development about the time of the Civil War. 12 With the coming of the railroad. East Rockaway's shipping industry was permanently stunted, and even to this day has never taken its former position. The railroad may have been a detriment in one respect, but it has brought many summer, as well as permanent, residents to our community. This has been the history of the past as Cap'n Rox has seen it, and now we should like to relate our class history as we have lived it: It was away back in September of 1943 that our Freshman president, Paul Krohn, called us to order at our first class meeting. With a bang of a book we were launched on our high school careers. I doubt that any of us will readily forget that year. We wont to the ''circus” in Rock Rivalry and had a lot of fun holding down last place. We went in as clowns determined to win and left as scholars who had learned a lot. Sophomore year, however, brought better luck. With a gypsy moon” riding high, we landed third place in Rock Rivalry. As Sophomores we were still developing—from a war for the presidency of the class to a major split between class Republicans and class Democrats over the national presidency. To the tun of ''The Strawberry Blonde” we waltzed into our Junior year and waltzed out of that Rock Rivalry with second place. The Junior Prom was held in our usual habitat, Dreamland.' With the war over, life slowed down to a more normal pace, and much to our girls' delight, old faces returned to grace our school. Returning in the fall of 1946, we found that we had lost a friend; Mr. Philip Langworthy had left, but the loss was lessened by the presence of our old acquaintance. Dr. Henry H. Bor-mann. When we think of white elephants, we think of Room 110 transformed into a gigantic bazaar. When we think of aunts, we think of Charley's Aunt, the Senior Play, and when we think of Christmas, we think of the Christmas Prom, where we danced to the pleasant melodies of the Islanders,” with the odor of evergreens pervading every nook and corner. Our last year here seems to have flown, and we could only wish that time would repeat itself. Despite what the future holds for us, though, we face it with hope and confidence because of our four preparatory years spent here in East Rockaway.