Boston Latin School - Liber Actorum Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Anni Hi Fuerunt . . . Cafeteria See Saws Pre-Christmas blues season was topped off on Thanksgiving day as Latin squeaked by English 24 to 22. It was during this first year at Latin School that we became ac- quainted with many of her traditions. We attended our first declama- tion. we became aware of the haunting Mr. Meanor who would plague our lives for several of the next six years; we competed in those age old contests to see who could bounce the highest on the cafeteria seats (while stealthly avoiding the watchful eyes of those dreaded cafeteria marshals ) . Before too long it was Christmas time and a well deserved vacation was enjoyed by all. Returning to school after the vacation, our egos received a bit of a lift. W ithout the use of our tattered program cards we were now able to find our classes before the bell rang. We no longer searched for the fabled fourth floor swimming pool and bought fewer and fewer eleva- tor passes. As we walked down the corridors we heard less hissing, and we finally understood the significance of the black arrows on the stairwells. VI hile we were busy patting ourselves on the back we didn ' t even notice that spring was upon us. Then it struck, a mass epidemic of •springitis. The symptoms were 1. an insatiable desire for comic books 2. an itchy water pistol finger 3. laziness. June was soon upon us. As the final bell rang out we burst out of our rooms with a voracious roar — we had made it and we had our promotion slips to prove it. As we raced down the corridors for the last time that year we bid farewell to our friends for the summer. Some we would see next year, others never again. Class V those endless corridors Doe. Mae It seemed that summer vacation had just begun when we returned to the hallowed halls of the Latin School. We were rid of the stigma of “sixie and went about the business of baiting the newest editions to our school. The curriculum this year was for the most part the same as last year’s except that Ancient history replaced geography and American history. The teachers became more strict as we learned sentence dia- gramming in English. D = RxT in Math, and aerodynmaics in study periods. Latin was more exacting this year as we delved into such sy ntactical subtleties as ablative absolute, purpose clause, and the sub- junctive. Ritchy. the author of last year’s book, was no longer our guide through this year ' s Latin course. The football season was as good as ever, and we took great pride in

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Senior Class Chronicle MMHU BllFINCH %n As Sixies the Assembly Hall seemed enormous The unbelievable M.B.T.A. Selling tickets the day before THE GAME. Messrs. Chamberlain. Miethe and Leiter judge a Science Fair exhibit. Class VI On September 9, 1964, the 450 new members of the class of 1970 ascended apprehensively the stairs of the famed Boston Latin School, uncertain as to what lay ahead. Many of those among us were already battered and bruised from their first experience with the M.B.T.A., ( truly the eighth w onder of the w orld ) . At 8:30 a.m., we filed into the assembly hall. As we took our places, we could not help but notice names on the walls of this auditorium. Names, which then meant nothing, but by the time we were ready for graduation would be culminated into a pride and heritage in Latin school which would stay with us the rest of ours lives. We were then greeted by the distinguished Dr. Wilfred L. O ' Leary, who was also beginning anew his career at Boston Latin School. He predicted that two-thirds of us would be gone by June, 1970. His prediction (even with the new math) comes pretty close. Our feeling of awe and mysticism was quickly dissolved. After a couple of weeks of long homeroom periods, never-ending writer’s cramp from filling out program cards for everyone (including alumni) and nomading about the building in a fog. we finally settled down to the business at hand: keeping our heads above water. Although our subjects, mathematics, English. American history, geography, and elementary science, were not radically different from our subjects in grammar school, they were however more difficult. Difficult enough to keep us busy: three hours a night for those who wanted to stay. And of course there w as Latin, the language of scholars and kings. With the aid of Ritchie’s First Steps we were introduced to this language to which our school has lent its name. To a few Latin would become an escape, an enjoyable path to the past; for most of us however it would turn out to be a headache, for which the only remedy was to grin and bear it. Although the scholastic endeavors were stressed, our physical con- ditioning was not omitted. In our bi-weekly phys-ed periods such teams as Notre Dame. S.M.U., and Purdue would compete in relays and basket shooting with unswerving zeal. The much sought-after results of these hotly contested battles were regularly scrawled on our home- room blackboards. The football season was soon upon us, and we learned that Latin school was not all work. We also became aware of the fact that those dreadful last periods on Friday could be legally skipped with the pur- chase of a football ticket. Those of us who did attend the games found it to be very rewarding as we watched our purple clad men on the grid- iron crush all opponents to become the undefeated City Champs. The

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• • • • • • Qui Nostros Spiritus F ingebant watching the upperclassmen, who suffered only one defeat in an other- wise perfect season. Of course there was Thanksgiving day, the 24-12 win over English provided a fitting climax to a great season. After the first of the year time passed more quickly than expected. The basketball team placed runner-up in the City League, thereby qualifying for a place in the Tech Tourney; however, the team was eliminated during the first round of the Tourney. The hockey team fell victim to hard luck with a 6-7-1 record. In March we were called upon to make our first important decision concerning our language elective for the next three years. e had to decide whether we were going to “Sprechen Deutsch” or Parlais Francais.” March soon faded into April and May. and Springitis once again arrived on schedule, only this year it was different. After almost two years at the most famous public school in America, we had become too sophisticated to read such things as Batman or Captain America. Rather, we advanced our reading to such intellectual pursuits as IVlad and the James Bond thrillers. Summer once again arrived in the nick of time. As we bid adieu to both those who were leaving and those who would return in the fall, somehow we knew that next year would be different. Class IV September, 1966, marked a new beginning for many of us at the Latin School. We were officially in our first year of high school. This meant that we were now eligible to participate in varsity high school sports, our school band, orchestra, and drill team. We were no longer committed to the sidelines. We were now able to represent Alma Mater on the playing field, and make her proud of us. There were also clubs to be joined, and other things to be done. Our high school days seemed to be ripening with age. hen we recovered from the shock of our new-found privileges, we noticed that our building was being over-run by creatures known as I B. They looked the same as we did, walked the same as we did. and even talked the same as we did. The only possible wav to distinguish the “A’ pupils (already two year veterans) from the “B” pupils, was the “A” pupils were marked by mental scars, and possessed advanced self-teaching assistance methods.” The curriculum was different from anything we had experienced in the previous two years. There was, of course English, but even that had changed. Instead of just grammar, we were introduced to Shake- speare, prose, and oral composition. The Latin we encountered was Ir. Aaron Gordon His Honor and Mayor White Mr. Philip Fox 13