Grant High School - Memoirs Yearbook (Portland, OR)

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MESSAGE Three hundred years ago the first secondary school of our country was organized. The idea of free education was a new one, especially above the elementary level, but now yearly thousands of young people finish their four years of training in these people-supported schools. You are a vital part of that great army ready for the next higher unit of our educational system or ready to enter some form of profitable employment. We who have directed your stay within this school have watched your marked development; we realize, with pleasure, your growth in experience, in ability to meet problems, in a grasp of the fundamentals of some of the great fields of knowledge; a growth in ability to use our mother tongue in speech or writing; in ability to understand the economic and social problems of our day. We also trust that into your lives has come a great unswerving determination to advance those elements of culture, of refinement, of worthy ideals that will uplift our race. We trust you have developed many of the finer, the abiding spiritual values of life. You have made a real contribution to Grant High School by your participation in all of its activities. You have left conspicuous records in scholarship, journalism, student body organization, debate, dramatics, art, music, manual arts, club work, and athletics. Your wholesome enthusiastic leadership in the school's life has been appreciated. Your class play will stand out among the very best given at Grant. These short four years spent here have passed but they shall live on into your and our future. Farewell! Our best wishes go with you to real success! —A. F. Bittner. In dedicating this volume of Memoirs to Talent we are not presuming to ignore the fine things that high school has done for us, the graduating class. It is customary to write an appreciation of the inspiration our teachers have been to us, of the devotion our parents have shown us, or of the fellowship we have enjoyed with our classmates. However, great as are these gifts, high school can do nothing more for us than to discover and to develop our inherent talents. It is the shoulder of Talent—active Talent—at the wheel that keeps the machinery of progress moving. Nothing can bring greater hope or faith to man than the vision of Talent soaring to those heights where it becomes a glory—nothing greater despair than the sight of Talent mired and lost. Whether this soul-imbedded seed may in the proper atmosphere yet blossom into true genius; whether, like the down of a peach, it will be rubbed off in the rough passing of this world; whether it be smothered by circumstances or ripened by opportunity—this rests with us, and with Fate. —The Editors.