Bolivar Central School - Gusher Yearbook (Bolivar, NY)

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djore word The term Forty-niner has come to occupy a unique position in the vocabulary of those who are familiar with American History. It exemplifies the love of adventure; it connotes courage and faith in self; it suggests the essence of inquiry, the search for truth, and the extension of horizons. It symbolizes those personal attributes and national qualities that are peculiarly American. Today these same qualities that were so evident a century ago call for expression in a world quite different from that of 1849. The call of the West no longer beckons youth by providing an avenue through which the desire for adventure, mastery, and romance can be satisfied. The continent is explored. The days of homestead-ing are history. Life in the United States is characterized by speed, power, and the thousand and one ways in which technology has modified our pattern of living. During the past century the age of mechanics came into being only to be eclipsed by electricity and now by atomic energy. In 1949 youth must seek his conquests in such fields as the laboratory, he factory, the halls of government, the classroom, and in the solution of the manifold social and economic problems of contemporary society. The pioneers of 1949 will travel by plane rather than by covered wagon. The rifle and sword will be replaced by the precision instruments of the laboratory, and the fields of exploration will no longer be the vast reaches of western plains but rather the broad category of social and economic adjustment as man, unchanged by the centuries, struggles toward the achievement of new goals. It is, therefore, most appropriate that today, 100 years removed ff S this period of historical romance, we adopt as the theme for our current “Gusher,” the Forty-niners. 5 —W. Cecil Davis

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Our cj Llma SWater BOLIVAR CENTRAL SCHOOL r 4

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dedication The Class of 1949 is honored to dedicate this book to a distinguished friend and patron of education — Miss Mary McDermott. A graduate of Bolivar High School, Geneseo State Teachers College and Columbia University, Miss McDermott taught in the local schools for several years before joining the faculty of Ypsilanti State Teachers College. For the past nineteen years she has been a member of the Bolivar Board of Education, bringing to this field of public service a background of experience rich in the understanding of its problems and motivated always by a desire to serve without compromise the best interests of the community that she so ably represents. Both the faculty and the student body join with the Class of 1949 in extending this deserved and happy recognition. This 1 learned from the shadow of a tree That to and fro did sway upon the wall: Our shadow selves—our influence—-ma fall Where we ourselves can never be. 6