Gloucester High School - Flicker Yearbook (Gloucester, MA)

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To the Class of 1986 7 It is a rare opportunity to be invited to write to a group of Gloucester High School graduates. It is even more rare given that this particular letter will be around for you to read for quite some time. I have, in this case, taken a signifi- m - 4 f ' can t amount of time to prepare this letter. 1 hope that you will find it of some value to you ... if not now, then later. All high school classes identify themselves with the events, the cataclysms, the music, and the tempo of the times in which they graduate. For my class (Class of ’64) it was the “Camelot” of Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy, the Htl Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of JFK, the Beatles. Martha and the Vandellas, and Chubby Checker which defined those times. There was something about that year and those times which made me feel our class was unique. We were not like those which preceded us; nor, were we like those which followed. Music, style, politics, the values of society shifted as we pro- gressed through adolescence. For those of us who continued into college, the release of the movie The Graduate in Spring, 1968, the spring of our senior year in college, reinforced that opinion. Our music, our behaviors, our dress and our values bordered on the edge of the old and the new. I think the same to be true of the Class of ’86. Your maturation has been accompanied by shifts in music, fashion, and dance. New wave, punk music, punk art, street dancing competed head to head with rock n roll, hard rock and the music of the seventies. You experienced a new interest in each other, for safety, and a new respect for drinking and driving. At the same time some students became seriously involved with drugs and alcohol. You experienced the governance of the nation under the conservative president Ronald Reagan. The “new right” and the “new morality” swept significant portions of the country. Pride in the nation’s economic system became a well marketed commodity. You suffered a major disaster in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and with that disaster the disillusion. Electronic gadgetry abounded in 1986, while computers and robots were on the cover of Time Magazine. It appeared that you were heading into a vortex of technological explosion the extent of which no one today can imagine. I’m not floating a claim that your time of growing up was like mine. All times are different. There are, however, some parallels which contribute to my feeling for you as you have experienced these three years at Gloucester High School. It is upon reflection of these parallels that I will take the chance to think that what has been important for me, as a product of my times, may also be important for you, as a product of yours. There are few people whom we meet in our lifetime who make a significant difference in our personal goals and values. We may meet them through work; some we meet as friends; and some we meet through school. But overall, given the number of acquaintances we have, there are dam Jew special ones. Those few individuals who are special to us, however we encounter them, cause us to reflect on ourselves and our directions. In a high school experience then, it is consistent to say, only a few of those teachers whom we meet will affect our directions very significantly. I would like to tell you about the teachers who were, for me, significant. Marion Benvie, Evelyn Abrahams, Mr. Lundgren and Dr. Sinches helped me to look beyond my yesterdays. They were all, in their own way, demanding teachers. It was not, however, that demanding quality which made them special to me ... it was the fact that they were an inspiration. They suggested to me that there was a world beyond Lynn, Massachusetts and that I had only begun to discover my talents for understanding and dealing with that world. Mr. Lundgren, in the eighth grade, drove me and five other students to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University as a reward for good grades. Ms. Abrahams taught us the difference between a Cezanne and a Van Gogh, although I ' ll bet that particular lesson was not in the Latin curriculum. Ms. Benvie plucked me out of a classroom one day, put me on stage and said “You can do it. Symonds” .... and I did it. Dr. Simches took me aside after a French class and told me, who did not write very well, that I had explicated a passage from Tristan and Iseult in a very sensitive manner. I was lucky enough to thank Marion before she died. 1 saw Mr. Lundgren last year at my twentieth high school reunion to thank him for that trip. I told him about how I had journeyed to the Museum on my bicycle six more times in the next three years and about how much I enjoyed taking my son there as well. I have not seen Ms. Abrahams or Dr. Simches since school days. I think about Ms. Abrahams whenever someone holds up a painting and 1 say to myself “I know who did that . . . about Dr. Simches when I write as he gave me the confidence that I had something worth saying . . . about Mr. Lundgren when I take my son to a museum . . . and about Ms. Benvie when I see a thespian production or any other play. These people helped me to believe in myself . . . they helped me to dream and to look beyond things as they were and to envision what they could be ... . This is a long winded way, and I hope it is not done in vain, of inviting you to return to see the carpentry shop teacher, the science teacher, the business teacher, the theatre arts teacher or whichever teacher or counselor helped you to look beyond. Thank you for being with us. 2

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►AWYER FREE L: .GLQ R. IV

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Athletics i 5 9 Spring Activities 181 Prom .... TT . 208 Graduation 214 Just Plain FUN!!! 229 Sponsors 237