DeLand Weldon High School - Eagle Spotlight Yearbook (Weldon, IL)

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JOHN LEISCHNER LORIN SWARTZ ERNEST HARPER BOARD O F EDUCATION HUGH BERGLAND OTTIS FLOYD LLOYD REESER KENNETH COTHERN

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SUPERINTENDENTS MESSAGE y r r » ■if To the Graduating Class of 1955: Have you ever stopped to think how many were in your class four years ago? Or how many were in the seventh grade? Or the first grade? Many have dropped out for various reasons. All of us, at times, have felt like dropping out somewhere along the line. May I congratulate you for your finishing the course--but let me hasten to say that it is not the end. This is only the beginning of those greater things to come. ,y 0i m, x y How we pride ourselves on how much more we can do in less time than those before us! How advanced and more efficient we are! So, in the same manner we can point with pride to the fact that your school is better because you were graduated from it; that you left rich heritages and traditions and have brought honor to your alma mater. I am extremely happy to have been associated with your class. •- - •

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PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE To the Students: How often have you heard it said that fur- ther schooling, new positions, new a- chievements, and new accomplishments are desirous but that there was a doubt to attempt these things because of fear of failure? w In our high school education we are taught that it is a disgrace to fail. We are prepared to go out and succeed. Very little is said about failure. The word is taboo and yet all of us will fail again and again. Such success that we do achieve is made of previous failures. From the first faltering steps of a baby learning to walk — through the 168 dif- ferent substances which Edison tried, bamboo, thread, human hair, metal fil- aments, as he searched for the proper incandescent glow for an elecuic light-- people have learned through the wise use of their failures. Why be afraid of failure? Failure m no disgrace. The lives of the greatest men have grown great by trying the impossible, and they have died trying. Even if we fail and never succeed, there is a chance that what we do may have success in others. There have been people who found their only justifica- tion in lives beyond their day. The sad smile of Lincoln, the rags of St. Francis, the tattered shoes of Johnny Appleseed, the blood-siained cross of Christ- -these are all the symbols of scornful failure that built triumph in a fu- ture they never enjoyed. Don’t be afraid of failures. Use them to make success.