Coker College - Milestone Yearbook (Hartsville, SC)

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SIGNING IN The forty-niners had nothing on the fifty-niners. In- stead of picks and shovels We were equipped with teddy bears and heating pads, and instead of gold in them that hills we found potato chips and strawberry jam! Our slogan was not California or Bust but merely Bust Cout-dated traditions of coursej. Not only did we develop our cerebral hemispheres in small groups sometimes called classes, but We developed originality. For after all, what other class had a Siamese twin hobo queen better known as Fran Moore and Pam Penning- ton? Their king was Stinky Segars! Other outstanding Freshmen included Dr. Barry and a Smith fellow, not Sterling Smith of the Clemson football fame, but just Sterling Smith. Well, back to the subject of originality. Who else but we would have attempted to sell stamps with pictures on them Cwe sold eightj or to make Christmas tags? We blame these brainstorms on our chairmen: Betty Crawford, Patsy Maxwell and Cynthia Sullivan. It really paid off to be in the Beauty-Cutie Court our Freshman year, for all six of our representatives, are now married-heading the list was our HIS! cutie queen Sara jean Long, who is equally famous for the quotation . . but I thought we got three cuts per quarter! We were the class that opened our Christmas presents be- fore the Christmas party-under the friendly guidance of our own gestapo Calias student councilb-for that was the year of the Big Search. Mary Alma Gee's room looked better after the search than before! Another accomplishment of Stu- dent Council was the death of Dunbar as a result of our being allowed to smoke in our rooms. Cigars thus became the undoing of Patricia Crawford. April came . . . the upstart Freshmen pulled another first, completely fooling the other three classes with an edition of the school newspaper featuring headlines abolishing exams. This infamous literary feat was entitled The Microscope. The same month we became the first class not to parade in white dresses to the graveyard on Founders Day. On May Day we were represented by two wonderful smiles. One belonged to Betty Crawforda the other to Donna Davis. Later in the month we produced the first of our musi- cals for our big sisters at the College Club. Also we made and sold many baskets. Enough said. The fact that we had won the Alma Mater contest was cancelled by the fact that we lost every single hockey game that fall. This explains why we only tied for the Presidents cup. Our jubilation was complete with the acquisition of our notorious class sponsor, Dr. A. A. Fahrner. Now the verdant Freshmen Cor as Sara J. Long thought, virgin freshmen J became the wise old Sophomoresf' de- scribed as cocky and better known as the Rebels of South! And we were truly the Rebels of South, for we rebelled just as much against tradition as Momma Woody would allow. We were determined to have fun-to make up for no one loving us. Our first brainstorm was to sell Coker mugs and jackets, one of our more successfulC?j business ventures. We soon began work on our pep song, and under the direction of Laurens McMaster and Ann Davis, we sang our way into the pep song championship. Has there ever been a class to teach everyone the pep song--even before the contest? The cutie contest came and went, and we supplied Cutie Queen number two in the form of Fran Moore. Our class could produce cutie queens, but were rather unfortunate in securing dates for the dances. Those posts do get lonely, don't they, Faye Gurley? While racking up victories on the hockey field, the gam- bling casino was going full speed ahead in the rec room. This seemed to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day business-except, of course, during exams when operation was limited to only twenty hours daily! After finishing our third civ. exam, we could think of only one thing-the three short weeks before our big production. Our tap class Canother firstj had rehearsed a few times pre- viously, and soon everyone was saying . . And Away We Go! ! -and no one had even heard of jackie Gleason! Find- ing staging facilities on campus rather limited, we looked for new horizons and found Thornwell, the big stage in front of the curtain. Taking the show off campus and running it for two nights were both Coker firsts. Finally the scenery that couldn't be done was done, Sylvia Pennell learned to throw her rose, Dr. Fahrner became addicted to grapes, and our second big production was opened to the public. As the final curtain went down to a standing ovation, we swelled with pride. Afterwards, the offers from TV stations looked mighty tempting, but we succumbed to only one offer -from some school called Clemson or something like that! Sylvia Pennell was thrilled to get to go, saying I can't say no, and Billie Kissane, Sylvia was not on A.P. Cor did you check?D Gessner Snowden was a top in Martha's girls, and it seems that she renewed some old acquaintances on that trip. Many will always note and long remember these experiences, most of all poor Billie Kissane, who made ar- rangements instead of studying Renaissance art. We certainly could not be accused of allowing education to interfere with our good times! But one day we heard a sad story about a little dormitory that was as good as good could be, until one night . . But crawling out on the roof was fun, especially for Mary Holmes and Elizabeth Whittle, even if the aftermath wasn't. Had we not been completely successful in all our athletic attempts, we might not have won the President's Cup that year- but we did! We had a very strange feeling. The casino was doing quite a business, everyone was playing bridge-and then we real- ized why. Exams were at us again! Of course, some people are quite industrious and study until 4 AM-only to sleep through the exam the next day! Now we were on the verge of being JUNIORS-those dignified upperclassmen. We made our daisy chain and placed it around the pool. In a few minutes we became jolly juniors. But if juniors are any jollier than sophomores .... In September the most loved class in Coker's history re- turned to Hartsville with heads filled with wonderful ideas

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-r-H SYLVIA DIANNE WATTS Sylvia B.S.-Business Education BET!-IUNE, S. C. Class of 1959 T.,f ii' ' .'- fr A l. 3522 mi ,,.wl' SYLVIA WINDELL VANCE WILLIAMS ffvdnceil A.B.--Mathematics HARTSVILLE, S. C.

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for changes in our beloved institution. We decided that it might even be necessary to break some of our own traditions just to keep in character. Barbara Roney was our president, Mary Alma Gee paid the bills and jumbled the books. On returning to school, those of us in South found our- selves without a house mother, since Mrs. Woodward had taken over the inhrmary. Someone suggested that maybe we could get a house daddy, but for some reason the sugges- tion never got anywhere. In a few days our new mother arrived and it was not long before Mrs. Cain become very dear to each of us. One of the first traditions that we managed to break was our own of winning the song contest. In order to overcome the sorrow of losing, we busied ourselves with our first semester money-makingf?J project. For some reason the market for octupi and felt Christmas stockings was not very strong, but we had fun anyway. Was it two thousand, two hundred, or twenty dollars that we made on this adventure? Will we ever forget the influenza epidemic? Everyone on campus seemed to be excited over the situation except Mrs. Woodward. And who was it that said Coker was too back- ward to get the Asiatic flu? It couldn't have been Lynnette Brinson who enjoyed a week's vacation as a result of the flu. At the Christmas dance we were very proud of our Barbara Dibble, who became the third in our line of Cutie queens. Soon after Christmas we began rehearsals for our produc- tion, Redskins to Rockets. After two successful presenta- tions at Thornwell, we journeyed to Florence to give a com- mand performance for thirty-two select guests. The spring brought Ray Anthony to the Coker campus. What a dance! Mary Alma, did you and Sylvia plan to keep all of those wild promises you made to two of the band members? Many traditions were broken when we treated the senior class to a gala banquet and dance at the Sonoco Club. First of all, we were the first class to give the Junior-Senior at the beautiful Sonoco Clubg and second, ir was the first time the president of the college had to pay for the band. We had a very successful year in sports-winning the hockey, volleyball, and deck tennis tournaments and also the crew races. On May Day we beamed with pride as we watched our attendants, Barbara Roney, Barbara Dibble, Bonnie Cone and Shirley Land, take their places in the May Court. It was not until Class Day when we received our rings and robes that we realized that we were about to leave our junior year behind and become sophisticatedC?D seniors. And were we sophisticated seniors? Well, anyway we were seniors. You might say we were vogue on the outside and vague on the inside. It seems that the fad of hoola-hooping had overtaken the entire class, nobody could outdo champs Shirley Land and Molly Creadick. Billie Kissane was elected our president for the second time and Faye Gurley was secretary-treasurer. We really kept senior hall alive, which was no easy job, as our little class of twenty-two who lived on the two fioors of Central didn't quite fill it up. We were small in number, but our spirits were higher than ever-dampened only slightly when we were met by that big fat senior syllabus. We immediately started thinking about a show for the early spring. Shirley, what inspired that number you sug- gested . . . Somebody Touched Me in the Dark Last Night ? The big thought in everybody's mind was practice teaching and writing seminars. A few of us started on our teaching, but we just kept thinking about seminars. We scored two firsts in the hockey tournament, tying with our sister class for the championship. We were the first hockey team to elect a homecoming queen and the first to hold the record of being unscored against in three years. For the song contest we had a hard time choosing between a pep song with a Latin beat or one with a march rhythm. We finally decided on the latter. It didn't win, but we won the alma mater prize for the second time. One day in December it snowed, and snowed, and snowed, and stayed for a week. We were happy as a roach about it . . . especially the table girls, who gleefully jumped out of bed at 6:00 every morning that week to Hx breakfast for the entire school while the cooks were snowbound at home. When time came to select our senior superlatives we couldn't break the tie between Faye and Sylvia for class wit, so we named each one a half-wit and everybody was happy. Cynthia continued to gain fame by winning golf tourna- ments. We predicted that she'd be our first class member to become a celebrity. One night we had a leg contest-not an ordinary one, but one to select the most bowed pair of legs. There was a large number of contestants and the decision was such a diffi- cult one that a tie was finally declared between a certain threesome. After Christmas we really sparkled-third fingers, left hands, that is. Our class set a record for bringing back dia- monds. Faye set a little record of her own by bringing back the most unusual fraternity pin we'd ever seen-from a boy we'd never heard of. After we were all convinced that the situation was on the level, she admitted it was just a joke. You know the story of the boy who cried Wolf, Faye. We were still thinking about a class production, and finally came up with a very original musical fashion show. We were proud and thrilled over our bonnie'l May Queen, Bonnie Cone. Dottie Harvey was elected maid of honor and Betty Crawford, crowner. Our attendants were Pat Crawford, Faye Gurley, Martha jackson, Billie Kissane, Shirley Land and Nancy Phillips. And all of a sudden it's over.,In caps and gowns we smile sophisticated and confident smiles, but inside we wish so much that we could have just a little while longer together. We want to be on our own, you understand, but just for one more day . . . It's over-but we have enough memories and friendships to last a lifetime, though the years may scatter us aprt. SIGNING OUT