Bellingham High School - Epilogue Yearbook (Bellingham, MA)

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Class History Marilyn Cowen From pigtails to pompadours and from knee pants to knickers, we stepped hopefully into the corridor of Bellingham High School four years ago. It was a day we will always remember. Many of us never thought our first day could be so complicated. Yes, it really was puzzling— why were so many bells ringing? Why were we getting pushed around by upperclassmen? Why was it such a task to open our lockers? We hated to ask the upperclassmen for assistance, believ¬ ing they would think us stupid. After the first frightening weeks, however, we realized that we were definitely aged and experienced Freshmen and B. H. S. wasn’t so monstrous after all. One of our chief concerns was the election of our capable class officei’s; Dave Tuttle, President; Walter Nadolny, Vice-President; Jeannette Du¬ bois, Secretary; and Donald Thayer, Treasurer. Then came the biggest hit of our Freshman year—the Freshman Acquaintance Party. We were the guests of the Seniors, who certainly did their utmost to give us a splendid time. In February, under the capable management of Miss Rood, we sponsored a Valent ine Dance. This came as a grand finale to a week of exam¬ inations, and provided us with our first oppor¬ tunity to show the upperclassmen what we Freshmen could do. And so our memorable Fi ' eshman year passed on, filled with many war¬ time restrictions and experiences we would al¬ ways remember. September found the doors opening a new world to us; we were Sophomores! We had waited only for the days when we might be up¬ perclassmen. We held our first class meeting for the pur¬ pose of electing class officers. Dave Tuttle, President; Jeannette Dubois, Vice-President; Nancy Cowen, Secretary; and Donald Thayer, Treasurer, were the ultimate victors. Our first social event of the year was the Thanksgiving Dance and a turkey raffle. The dance was a great success, but most everyone had his eyes on the turkey. Much to our regret Mr. Rocha left us in De¬ cember for service in the United States Navy but our grief was soon forgotten when we walked into cur homeroom the following Monday morn¬ ing and found that we were under the guidance of Miss Downey. All received a great shock when we saw a notice on the bulletin board that we were to have mid-year exams. We were so worried we couldn’t sleep nights—can you imagine our not sleeping because of school work? Too bad that exemptions were ruled out for certainly, we would have all been exempted. (A very brilliant class!) It was a great relief when exams were over; now we wouldn’t have a thing to worry about—at least not ‘til finals. In February, we had another great dis¬ appointment, Miss Downey left us, but Mr. Hutchinson was with us as a class advisor until June. What was the matter? As Sophomores we must have been intolerable, driving out so many teachers. It was in our Sophomore year that we ordered our prize packages, our class rings. It was necessary to order them one year early that we might be protected against rising costs and dwindling supplies of metal. The great conflict was now progressing at a maddening pace and we found it difficult to concentrate on our studies. However, the remainder of the year flew by and before we knew it, we were Juniors, the year we had been looking forward to. To our surprise, we started our Junior year under the guidance of Miss Mathieu and when our voting was over, we found that we had elected capable Dave Tuttle, President; Mike Berardi, Vice-President; Jeannette Dubois, Sec¬ retary, and Donald Thayer, Treasurer. It was during the beginning of our Junior year when a great fad took hold of the student body. The girls roamed around with bow ties and the boys rolled up their pant legs to show their classy socks. It really was a comical sight. We were given the name of “Jolly Junioi ' s” and we had to live up to it. With the assistance of Nick, Chuck, and a few others, we did a pretty good job of it. In October we sponsored the Halloween Dance. The hall was decorated with cornstalks and pumpkins, ghosts, and witches, which gave it a real appearance of Halloween. War travel restrictions were now lifted so it was possible once more to use buses for travel to and from school functions. We received our class rings and they are the proud possession of every Junior and the real envy of all the other classes. Bellingham was very active in sports this year with the Junior boys forming the backbone of