Belmont Hill School - Belmont Hill School Yearbook (Belmont, MA)

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Our first student government responsibility was wel- comed by 7-A, which ran the study hall after lunch on a rotating basis. Werman hung out the study hall win- dow and N ahmie sent us all running around the build- ing to expiate latenesses. It was a gay time, and we all put each other in The Book numerous times. Loomie and Tommie were buddies, and Tom started his fantastic series of clever little skits with different members of the class. His was the sense of humor that brightened in the Fourth Form when he and Hewper sent Mr. Willey's English class into hysterics over Hewp's little cartoons of that gentleman, and reached its height in the last weeks of English VI-A when they left a month-old hot dog in Mr. Aloian's closet as a symbol of something or other. Came the spring: D-Day, that long-awaited excur- sion into the exotic territory of Princeton, Mass., for a day of good clean fun under the watchful eye of Mr. D. D-Day was exactly concurrent with the return of the black flies from Capistrano, despite this, we managed to raise some real hell, like lighting firecrackers deep in the underbrush, and making up funny little rhymes about Mister Charlie Smith on the bus back. The Log, our lower-school periodical, which splin- tered biweekly in the Panel, came out under the digni- fied leadership of Bill Herron. The Log published a final gala issue, including the traditional Seventh Grade Yearbook, from which we learned that every clod in the class wanted' to be a chemical engineer, and that Maynard Maxwell was going any place but Har- vard. The Eighth Grade represented our liberation from what was referred to by our new gatekeeper as the monkey house Calthough it had never seemed that way to us.l The Class of 1962 bequeathed us Pete Shaw, Wes Danser, Jeep Whitelaw and a little lad named George Augustine McCormack. Fessenden sent us Peter Mac- Laurin, Dave Millard, and Jeff Kosow, while Canada offered us Henry Atkins. Various unidentified places, some of them schools, sent us Dougs MacLean and Bonner, Dick Vietor, Roddy Furnald, Hooper Brooks Cno relation to the famous haberdashery store, Hooper Bros.5 and Al Fuller. A new personality blew into our lives like a spring breeze laced with eau de cologne. He was Mr. John Henry Funk, and under the auspices of Ethics I taught us all about what Werman had only hinted at, and re- vealed that those who do the most talking about it do the least doing. Perhaps the biggest flaw in this course was that Bobby Bell missed it. Bill Herron asked sev- eral naive questions and the highly touted movie,' was a big disappointment, especially to Charley Starr, who sneaked into Assembly hoping to see last year's movie', again. Rod appeared and everybody thought he was a link, but after a few years he opened his mouth and became president of the Forum. He became a past master at dreaming up clever little impromptu speech topics like why should women wear blue hats. Garth hadn't mounted his soapbox yet and didn't stand a chance. Buddy and Tom got excited about good music and began playing U. S. Bond's records at low speed to catch any erotic references. Both of them are still at it, in a slightly more sophisticated way. Tommie and eru- dite Mr. Jackson had difficulties, but Mr. Jackson left at the end of the year and Tommie didnit, so things were O.K. Al Fuller left at the end of this year, but not before he found the time to deposit his appendix with MGH, and an ice-cream sandwich in roommate Furnald's sports-coat pocket. Those were the days before Rod could freeze anything with a glance. Although we werenit yet out of Mr. Funk's jurisdic- tion, Form Three was quartered in Eliot, we worked under a stone plaque marked Disce aut Discedef' The new faces that September belonged to Pete Get- ting, Doug Amon, Mike Austin, Chris Brooks, Gil Campbell, Pete Feresten, Woody Underwood, Perry Wicks, Bill Diamond, John Donovan, and Bob Bell. Somewhat more familiar were the faces of Rodger Matt- lage and Walter Densmore, who couldn't stand the idea of getting too far ahead of neighbor Butchie aca- demically. Bill Garth had been elected to the class presidency the year before following a sympathetic an- nouncement that he was in the hospital, and he ruled with dignity. The Belmont Assemblies were still the scenes of romantic intrigue-not yet had we grown up enough to realize that their proper function was as a fireworks testing ground. Bob Bell started to realize that he was fated to be class host, and many headed to the dimly-if-at-all-lit Beatrice Circle abode hung with all those clever party signs. While Bob was intro- ducing the select to sparkling Cataba and the Belmont Junior High pickings, Pete Feresten introduced the Underwood Boarders to Jack Kerouac, and formed the rather informal Subterranean, coke-sipping, teevee so- cial group. Pete was not the only symbolic literary critic, Mr. Gurney carefully explained to George Mc- Cormack the significance of Jim Conklin's initials in The Red Badge. George thought this was pretty clever, so he wrote a Sexlant contribution featuring one Jesse Crittenden, it would have been printed too, but for Jimmy Cole. Mr. Gurney also introduced the school to serious theatre, as the Dramatic Club presented Stalag 17, Pietz the SS guard and Merry the POW were on oppo- site sides for once. Buddy underwent two weeks of dili-

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TH E HISTORY of the Class of l963 Mark Twain once wrote that it is the difference of opinion that makes horse races. Similarly, perhaps, it is the difference between people that make life inter- esting. If in this our Class History we seem to empha- size the difference between our classmates over their similarities, their frictions over their accords, it is in the interest of both animation and honesty. Our class, per- haps more than previous ones, has lacked that essential solidarity that makes life both uniformly pleasant and uniformly dullg factions were always present, and there is no percentage in denying the fact. But we think we have gained immensely from living in a class that em- braces extremes, from dealing with both animosities and agreements, this Class History is an attempt to present as accurate a picture as possible of our years at Belmont Hill. Most Class Histories begin on the first September morning of the Fifth grade year, when the newly- arrived innocents are thrown bodily off the Seventh Grade steps of the Lower School by a bunch of older preadolescent thuglets. Ours begins however, on a spring afternoon in 1954 when about twenty-five wet- eared fourth graders sit writing bluebooks in the Lower School study hall: the entrance exam. Two weeks later fourteen mothers got calls from Mr. D., and the Class of 1963 was conceived. Not until the next fall did Fred Quinn, Joel Shapiro, John Worthen, Bud Karelis, Al Taylor, Rick Loomis, Paul Dorsey, Ricky Weiss, Glenn Merry, Butch Maxwell, Paul Consales, Bill Herron and Paul Pietz have the opportunity to be thrown off those sacred stairs. The Fifth Grade was our first taste of many of the things that were later to make life interesting-college admissions pressure, homework, music teachers and of course extracurricular activities. Who Cbesides Johnnies come latelyj can forget the Fifth Grade restroom Cin the sense of rest roomj where the more ambitious joined their first club-the HO scale electric railroad train club. This year also proved our introduction to great literature: on rainy afternoons, when we weren't viewing movies about pea canneries, Mr. Densmore read to us from Ploopie Beanshoot, the Real Diary of a Real Boy, which got funnier as you read it faster. We were also introduced to Music Appreciation by a Mr. Cowperthwaite, who was only one year older than Walshie is now. Near the middle of the year the good gentleman's eyes lost their idealistic glaze-Bel- mont Hill could not be made safe for music. Also near the middle of the year a well rounded seventh grader named Bill Hoffman fell through the study-hall ceil- ing and we got plastered for the first time. During the winter a jolly little election-year revue was presented, featuring most of the fifth grade sitting around in bikinis and discussing the S. A. Csex appeal, friendsj of Tom Deweyfs mustache. The fact that it was '54 and not '48 didn't bother us until we reached the Sixth Form and Calderized CInghamized?J history. The climactic rumble over the Steps on D-Day foreshad- owed many similar conflicts involving snow, Panel editorships, even Prom dates. Certain longstanding class neuroses can probably be traced back to the beginning of the next year, when we were designated either 6A or 6B. Maybe the arrival of our class conscience, Bill Garth, helped too. And if that didn't succeed in inhibiting the free play of our pre-pubic emotions, perhaps it was the arrival of Henry Cooper, Tummy Saliba, Tommy Werman and John McKittrick, all of whom brought new pleasures and squabbles into our lives. Both Tummy and Tommy came to chat knowingly about the world of forbidden adolescent pleasures, and Cooper began his much- bruited round of battles with McKittrick, who turned out to be nearly two hundred pounds of very vulnera- ble pot roast. Mr. Cowperthwaite was replaced by Mr. Sokol, who, Glenn assured us, wore a toupe. Another new teacher burst into the Hill that year: to Dorsey he was Daven- portereeno but to the rest of us he was Mister Plumer, and he kept a sir-bird. If Mr. Calder later taught us that precise speaking is called American Historyj, we learned from Mr. Plumer that American History is called Diction.,' Ninteen fifty-seven brought us Stu Davis, John Smethurst, M-alcolm Kirkbride, Donni Hunt, Norm Wilson, Don Andreson, a recession, and that old locker room favorite, Get a Job. Mr. Taylor Canother mu- sic teacherj also arrived to find his blackboard covered with remarks about Taylor's Groundhog beans and gouged with furrows from Loomie's fingernails, which curdled our blood. Perhaps out of revenge, Mr. Taylor decided that we should present that hit musical, Trial by Jury as our year's dramatic offering. Taylor had a thing about lyrics, he decided to alter Buddy's first line to Is this the court of the exchequer? Be firm, be firm my heart, even though Gilbert, Sullivan and most of the lower school agreed that heart didn't rhyme very well with exchequer. The Pawnees won the debating trophy for the hun- dredth-odd year in a row. Maybe they were just lucky, but some observers noted that the affirmative side of resolved: that a well-rounded education is essential to the well-rounded man was not exactly indefensible.

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DOUGLAS PALMER AMON .,D0ug,, P. G.: Deerfield Born: April 15, 1945 Football: J.V., '60g Varsity '61, '62 Basketball: I.V., '60: Varsity '61, Captain '62, '63 Baseball: J.V., '6Og Varsity '61, '62, '63 Panel: Editorial Assistant, '61, '62, '63 Athletic Council: '62, '63 Study Hall Proctor: '62, '63 Coaches' Award in Baseball: '61 Ex-Captains' Basketball Award: '62, '63 Babe Ruth Foundation Sportsmanship Award: '63 Haaaaaaaa DONALD CARL ANDRESON 58 Buckman Drive, Lexington, Mass. D DA D0n'l College: Wheaton Born: February 25, 1946 Entered: 1957 Football: J.V., '61 Basketball: J.V., '61 Sextant: Associate Editor: '61, '62, '63 Student Council: '60, 63, Class President '61 Drama Club: '62, '63 Humanities: '63 Cum Laude Society: '62, '63 Honor Roll: '57, '58, '59, '60, '61, '62, '63 Cum Laude . . . Well, huh, I . . . ah . . . I sort of thought this was valid, sir . . . all . . .' A fi 5 if in KX liQ Q'Nx amwwswrawaamn 143 i i t wi' 40 Scotland Road, Reading, Mass. Entered: 1959