Durfee High School - Durfee Record Yearbook (Fall River, MA)

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A Message ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ To you, members of the Class of 1944, I give the hearty congratula- tions of the faculty on the completion of your high school years, unusual years in which you have been forced to meet unusual situations, and you have met them well. Forty-five boys from your class have already gone from Durfee’s portals to enter military service, and they are but the vanguard of many more of you, both boys and girls, who will soon be enrolled in the armed forces of our country. In addition to your regular school program, many of you have helped on the home front by working in the various war indus- tries of our city. The patriotism that all of you have displayed, when called upon to aid in any way the war effort, has been a splendid example for classes to come. You have assisted in the drives for the collection of paper and scrap metal;

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FEE OF 1944

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you have been part of the invasion army of Durfee students in behalf of the Red Cross drive; you have con- sistently bought War Savings Stamps and War Bonds, but you have risen to the greatest height of patriotic effort in the Fourth War Loan Drive when Durfee “took to the air” by the purchase of a mighty bomber. This height to which you have risen in your patriotism and loyalty to your school is the symbol of the skyward flight of the pilot who will guide your bomber in one of the theaters of war. As that pilot for the safe accomplishing of his mission will take his bomber high above the clouds, so may you keep high your ideals of courage, patriotism, and right living to guide you safely through the years ahead—hard years of war and still harder years of peace with problems which will require love of country, integrity of character, clearness of vision, and the courage to follow that vision. Upon you, the men and women of the immediate future, depends the solution of these problems. Upon your loftiness of purpose depends the retention of the democratic princi- ples of our founding fathers.