Easthampton High School - Echo Yearbook (Easthampton, MA)

Page 47 text:

We need things to live by, things more enduring than the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that we have been so ruthlessly chasing. Each of us wants something that will stand the test of time. And if we want to be intelligent hu- man beings, we've got to know something of other intelligent human beings, in other words we've got to know something of history, and literature, and phil- osophy. That goes way back into the classics which we modern people have discarded as so much slag in our education. In refining copper we used to throw slag away, too, until our chemists discovered that we had been throwing away vast quantities of gold and silver at the same time. All Europe admits We Americans are clever chemists and business men, but when we naively call such things progress, Europe smiles sarcastically and calls it the materialistic insolence of unbalanced minds . And to a great extent it is true, before our very eyes, some of our pet ideals, our material prosperity and all that, are proving chemerical and vanishing like the rainbow with the pot of gold. Progress isn't progress if it progresses toward a mirage. Hadn't we better apply that energy of ours that Europe envies, to a study of human thoughts and ideas that we have been throwing away as slag, to see if perhaps we may not find silver or gold? Only when we shall begin to think of Socrates, Dante, Shakespeare as live people like ourselves shall we be citizens of the real living human world and not passive caps in a mammoth machine. Such men have left their tracks in this world, and if we want to see where they lead, we must grow in our colleges to be real students and not mere course-passers. This is what St. Mary's helps the Pole to do. The Pole does not look upon its solemn beauty as a relic washed up out of the sea of the past, to him it is a light house, a marker giving him his bearings in the waves of change that sweep over his country with the centuries. We young Americans have our lighthouses, too, but we haven't been paying much attention to them. What do we know of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, for example except a few catchwords and an anecdote of two? It's high time to learn. I hope some of you will remember it when you choose your col- lege and your profession. EDMUND ZAWACKI '25 CLASS OF l9I4 REUNION The class of 1914 held a supper re-union the evening of Friday, June 22. The general chairman of arrangements was Mrs. Wallace Riedel to whom much credit is due for the success of the occasion. Miss Mabel Buckner of the New Haven High School was the competent and witty toast-mistress. Several members of the class responded to toasts on various topics of interest to those present. Mrs. David Riedel gave an illustrated travel talk her trip to Colorado, California, Mexico, and alson the Pacific coast to Canada, where she visited Lake Louise and the Canadian Rockies. This proved most interesting. Mrs. Wallace Riedel sang several selections, which were greatly enjoyed. Members present came from Columbia, Mo., New Haven, New York City, Springfield, Northampton, Westhampton, Huntington, Southampton, and Easthampton. Forty-five

Page 46 text:

TO THE NEW ALUMNI FROM AN OLD ONE Letter from Edmund Zawacki, E. H. S. '25, He has been studying for his doctorls degree at the University of Warsaw. I trust that the Echo will find room in the alumni section for a few words of mine addressed primarily to the new graduates. What I want to do, if I can, is by one or two touches point out what in Poland has struck me as being of particular value to young Americans about to enter college. I don't want to talk abstractly about culture, traditions, ideals, nor any of those convenient hobby horses which, ridden in the abstract, really get you nowhere. I do want to touch upon them concretely, however. A contrast of what Americans and Poles value most and are proud of, will perhaps show what I mean by a concrete touch on tradition. If the Empire State Building should burn down tomorrow, what would happen? We Americans in one voice would answer that even before the ashes were cool, we'd be at work building a bigger and better one, and in a year it would be up towering among the clouds. Europe envies us this pep and go, it's specifically Americang no other nation has it as we have. As I stood once in the market place of Cracow looking at the twin steeples of St. Maryis, the Westminster Abbey of Poland, the thought ran through my head, What if it should burn down, would it be rebuilt? Here is the very crux of the difference between the Empire State Building and this church: No, it would never be rebuilt. It could never be. Each brick in its walls, each weather and time worn cobble stone before its portal is a rosary bead hallowed with prayer and love. Hearts have been cemented into that building with stuff more binding than mortar. If it burned down, no architect, no engineer could even put back what Copernicus, Chopin, Kosciusko and other great Polish names have built into it. It is a symbol. Some of us Americans, deep down, envy the Pole a little in that he has something stable that stands as a living link with the past. Though the hejnal trumpcted from the taller tower is now caught in a microphone and broadcast all over the world, being Cracow's station call, it is still the same call that broke off with the trumpeter's life when a Tartar arrow lodged in his throat. Each hour the Cracovian hears it, each hour he is reminded of noble deeds, and in the midst of much that is noisy, and cheap, and temporary, St. Mary's stands solemn and beautiful, appealing eloquently for the unchanging things of the past. We students in America, as I have discovered in myself during many inter- esting conversations with Polish university men, lack that concrete vital link with what is changeless in human nature. We are wide awake to the wisdom of the age, but hopelessly ignorant and scornful of that of the ages. Long, long ago it was Solomon, I think, who said, There is nothing new under the sun , many things that are old have lived so long because they are truths eternal in themselves, many new discoveries often turn out to be discarded falsehoods un- earthed again. Wc must discriminate. Forty-four

Page 48 text:

WHAT LAST YEAR'S GRADUATES ARE DOING Joseph Aronson Lena Barszewski Verna Beach Albina Bialeski Edward Borsuk Fanny Bradford Dorothy Canning Eleanor Carver Mae Cavanaugh Susan Cernak Richard Chittim Helen Clark Francis Corkery Roland Couchon Theodore Czajkowski Janet Diamond Gabrielle Dragon Genevieve Drondoski Beatrice Dumont Edward Egan Elizabeth Flint Ellen Flynn Anna Foder Ruth Gagnon Irving Gaskill Frieda Goepfert Frederick Golka Helen Gorski Edith Greensmith Emily Healey Anna Jagadowski Chester Kapelewski Anthony Kieleszek Helen Kirschner Vera Kitson Erna Koehler Mary Kolbusz Anastasia Kostek Katherine Krumpholz Leonora Kunda Dorothy Kurtz Gertrude La Palm Herbert Lownds Forty-six Northampton Commercial College Hartford, Conn. Westfield Teachers' College Ware, Mass. Hampton Mills At home Northampton School for Girls Duke University Westiield Teachers' College Cooley Dickinson Hospital Post Graduate at E. H. S. Post Graduate at E. H. S. Williston Hampton Mills P. G. at E. H. S. Hampton Mills McCarthy's Business School Geo. S. Colton Elastic Web Co. ' At home Northampton Commercial College M. S. C. Glendale At home Northampton Commercial College At home Northampton Fuller Brush Salesman At home Glendale M. S. C. at home At home Post Graduate at E. H. S. Post Graduate at E. H. S. Glendale Cooley Dickinson Hospital Glendale Westfield Teachers' College Springfield At home Glendale At home At home