Hughes High School - Hughes Yearbook (Cincinnati, OH)

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we had not yet attained the coveted privilege of choosing iour class officers, like the two upper classes. In April of this year an event took place which made a supreme change in the life and character of some of us, and which left none of us untouched. Our country entered the war. It was not until the beginning of our third year, that we really began to feel a little of the effects of the great struggle into which our nation had plunged. A Red Cross workroom was established at Hughes, and here the girls worked every afternoon. Thrift stamps were for sale in the hall. We collected over live thousand books for the soldiers. When the Liberty Loans were launched, some of the home rooms bought bonds, and every day we gloried more and more in our great service flag, for some of the stars represented boys from our own class. In spite of our war work, very few of the usual class social functions were omitted. True, a dance was substituted. for the usual athletic banquet, but we had our election of officers, our B day, and gave a B-A reception that will not be soon forgotten. When our Junior year came to an end, many of us, who in ordinary times would have prepared for a vacation trip, entered some kind of work. Few, indeed, were altogether idle during the summer, for no one felt in the mood for the usual, carefree good times, when so many of our good friends and relatives were either already across the water, or in training camps preparing to go across. Then September came again, and we were back once more, as' Seniors. What a short time ago it seemed since we entered those doors for the first time. At the beginning of our Senior year we planned to do many things, as do all A classes, but a newly arrived gentleman from SpaineSefior Influenza, had other plans. Indeed, his rule was so severe that it was necessary to Close school twice before he was dethroned. During the second enforced vacation, the most wonderful, joyful, welcome news in four years, reached us. The war, which only a few months before, seemed bound to go on for at least a year, came to a sudden close. Germany asked for an armistice. Almost before we knew it the boys began to come, and all of us, except those whose brothers and friends had made the supreme sacrifice, soon settled back into the old way of things. The epidemic delayed our class election considerably, but we have certainly made up for lost time now. Our Senior party was a tremendous success, and our dance was one long to be remembered.. Now, unbelievable as it may seem, our years at Hughes are almost over. They have been happy years, full to the brim with work and play and good times, and an occasional. misconduct slip. It cannot last much longer, and we shall soon be separated. Some of us will enter the business world, others will continue their education at the Cincinnati University, or at other univer- sities and colleges. From now on our interests and aims will be different, but whatever we do, and wherever we go, we all- will look back often and think with pleasure, and with regretior the good times so quickly past, of our four years at dear old Hughes. ALBERTA KUMLER, 19. WW

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SENIOR CLASS HISTORY NE golden morning in the early part of September, 1915, a thousand little boys and girls straggled by twos and threes into the auditorium of the Big School on the Hill, and the doors were closed upon them. Two hours later, the thousand little boys and girls came out of the auditorium, but this time not in meandering pairs; they were in orderly little groups of about twenty-five each, and each group was headed by a teacher who conducted them to a Class-room, and there abandoned them to the tender mercies of another teacher. So a new class, the class of 1919, our class, was born. Not a very remarkable beginning, no more unusual or spectacular than the beginning of dozens of other Classes, yet what one of us will forget the smallest detail of those first few weeks at Hughes! Come, gentle reader, and go back with us over some of those events that stand out in every Freshman's career. We might mention countless incidents that befell us, but we will have toVbe content to pick only those which stand out in particular. Of course, to begin with, we all at one time or other got lost, and then there were not any'kindly Hbig sisters to help us, either. Some of us may recall how after searching frantically for the Hgym, we found it and bounced joyfully in, only to discover that it was the wrong gym. Needless to say, in those embarrassing cases, our exit was always executed with more haste than grace. The day that saw our introduction to the lunch room should be marked by a gold star. We learned to buy lunch cheeks and we learned to consume in ten minutes what would ordinarily have taken a half hour. We learned also, some of us by bitter experience, that woe be to the pupil who tried to gain the coveted entrance to the lunch room, by pushing ahead of the line. There seemed to be so many things to learn and to remember in those first few weeks, that many of us despaired of ever remembering any- thing, but gradually the school which at hrst seemed abnormally large, settled into focus, and we all began to drop into our own particular niche. Then hardly had we become acquainted with our teachers and with each other, when vacation came again, and our first high school year was over. The minute we stepped through the door, at the beginning of our second year at Hughes, we knew that a mysterious change had taken place during our absence. True, the school looked the same, only less terrifyinglylarge than when we first arrived, but that was not the change we felt. It took us a-few days to discover that the difference was not in Hughes, but in ourselves. We were not strangers this year, we felt as if we belonged to Hughes' and Hughes to us. There was no more frenzied searching for rooms, and no more timid queries as to where places were. There was another class below us now, and we were the ones Who answered, not asked, questions. I grieve to say that whenever these new Freshmen asked questions of us, we answered in the same patronizing manner, and smiled the same amused, superior, slightly bored smile, that we had so often received in our Freshman year. Our second year passed much more quickly than the flrst. We attended all the football games, and the only blot on our happiness was the fact that l271

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