Imbler High School - Golden Reveries Yearbook (Imbler, OR)

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Co-Valedictorian Address THAT AMERICA MAY LIVE By Jack Burton We graduate from this high school tonight. We are the products of a free public educational system in America. We have received our training in a public school, which had its beginning many many years ago. When our democracy was set up by our forefathers, it was a recognized fact that a government by the people, of the people, and for the people could not survive unless the people were able to govern themselves. Therefore it was found advisable to establish some governmental system which would help citizens to qualify themselves for self-government. Thus the public school system was established that the American system of government might have a chance to live. At no time in history have young people more strongly realized the greatness of this form of government than in the present age. We realize how deeply indebted we are to those who planned wisely for our education. We also realize how thankful we should lx? that we live in a nation where youth is taught to think and feel for itself. If there ever comes a time when the people of this nation have taken from them the right to be educated in public schools, then the signal of doom will have sounded for the American way of life. Because we speak the same language, because we sing the same songs, lx?cause we wear the same clothes, because we read the same lx oks and newspapers, because we listen to the same radio programs, because we labor for a common cause, we in America understand each other and get along with each other. We learn to work together, to play together, to live together. We learn to love the same institutions. We learn to respect and honor the flag which gives us protection, and guarantees to us the right of life. lilx?rty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today we are engaged in a terriflic struggle which is taxing the loyalty of every citizen of this nation. Forgetting self, we are all working together in one great sweeping movement that America may live, and that there may lx saved for the world a place where men and women and children may live with individual freedom. To bring life to this nation, others made enormous sacrifices of home ties broken, the lonesomeness of a foreign land, the hardships of settling the frontier. I hese were not too great for others to pay to bring life to this nation. The long hard struggle of moulding people of various religions, races, and color into a harmonious way of life was made by those who gave this nation its great strength. Our effort to keep America strong that America may live is surely not too much to ask of any of us. In the past, many have taken it for granted that the library which was theirs would remain without effort on their part. We have asked so much from government and given so little. The nation has been kind to us. But now the tables are reversed. The nation calls upon us to preserve the very liberties which we have enjoyed. To give rather than to take is now our slogan. And we must give. We must give in money, in energy and in service. We must give by enduring hardships and doing without pleasure. We shall meet the crisis as every generation in America has done. This year there is coming out of the high schools of the nation thousands of young men and women awaiting service for their country. As those before us fought to give life to this nation—as those before us fought to preserve this nation, and to nurture it—so we will serve that America may live.

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Salutatorian Address c ?0 TO KEEP US FREE By Donna Heisner We have come to our graduation from high school in a period of great conflict on many battlefronts of the world. There is no nation, no group of people, not affected by the ravages of war which has threatened the very foundation upon which civilization rests. In fact, in the early period of the war. many of the bravest. and most enduring, feared that the rock upon which the temple of civilization had been built, through the centuries, was about to lx washed down into the swirling waters of the sea of oblivion. In the darkest days of the conflict, when the sun of hope almost ceased to shine for millions of men and women, who had long enjoyed the blessings of liberty and the fruits of prosperity, under government of the people, even in the United States there were those who began to doubt the future. And then out of the ruins of London and Coventry, and out of the hearts anti determination of men and women who refused to bow to the dictators and place upon the gift table of the war gods all the freedoms they had gained through the centuries, arose a spirit—a mighty spirit—to keep us free. Upon the frozen plains of Russia—from the troubled land of China—from th -continent familiarly called the “Land Down Under —across the burning sands of the African desert, from submerged positions far beneath the surface of the mighty oceans, from tin- unseen courses of the sky. came the spirit—a mighty spirit—to keep us free. It was tin spirit of men who had always loved freedom and right and justice. It was the spirit of all of those who had died at all the Gettysburgs and Valley Forges the world has ever known since the beginning of time. It was the collective voice of the heroes of the past speaking to the men and women of today. It was a voice telling us of the present to keep the faith they had fought for on the battlefields of the past—the voice spreading the hope that we might continue to lx- free. The ages have rolled along their course since the beginning of time. Then-have always been those despotic rulers who would cast a cloud across the sky of hope for freedom of the masses. There have always been those who have sought to trample under the heel of the tyrant the poor masses who only seek a fair share for their dividend in abundant living. But the despots have passed with the passing of time. The tyrants have lived but their short day. The rights of the people have prevailed that each passing generation might enjoy the benefits of freedom. There is but one excuse for war. There is but one high purpose men can have in waging conflict. Guided by the lofty purpose that men and women have a right to live under governments of their own choosing, and pursue a way of life fitted to their state of advancement—nations have a right to go to war. And thus we are at war today—to preserve our rights—to keep us free. We have come to the day of our graduation from high school at a period which historians will record as one of great crisis for the rights of mankind. We have come to the day of our graduation when we. t x , as those who survived Coventry. and the other places of attack, hear the voices of the millions who gave their lives in the past that we might enjoy the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Tonight the message has come to us. We realize that America lights to keep us free. We realize that we must serve to keep us free. We realize that our first task ahead is to help bring the present conflict to an end that peace may prevail. We realize the debt we have to pay.

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Co-Valedictorian Address WE HERE HIGHLY RESOLVE By Aria Lanman For several years the members of the class now graduating have been studying the history of a country we love to call America. We have followed faithfullv the stories of the lives of the great men of the Nation. We have read of the struggles necessary in making and building this country which reaches geographically from ocean to ocean anil from the pines on the north to the palms on the south. But we know, too, that the boundary line of American influenced the great men »f this nation to keep their eyes forward and their hearts high are the principles which guide lilx rty and freedom loving men and women the world over. Tonight we are graduating from a high school which we have come to love. Shortly we shall leave the homes which have sheltered us through the years of our childhood. We have come to love these homes too. We hold deep regard for our schoolmates, our faculty meml ers. and all of those who have helped us along the path thus far. We revere the memory of those who helped to build this nation great and preserve it for us. We love America, our homeland. We go forth from high school tonight highly resolved that the homes which have sheltered us; that the school which has nurtured us; that the schoolmates and our associates of the years; and the country we call our homeland shall have the security which our forefathers fought so valiantly for. We here highly resolve that we shall not forget the great lessons we have learned from the lives of our nation’s heroes. We are not going to forget Washington and his men at Valley Forge—who never gave up. We are not going to forget that Thomas Jefferson fought not with the sword, but with the pen and all the words at his command; that people of a free nation might have their freedom secured through a national system of free education. We are not going to forget the immortal Lincoln, who dared to stand firm for the right as he saw it. We are not going to forget the heroes of the Argonne and their comrades in arms of another great world war. We are not going to forget the heroes of the South Pacific—the men whose lives were snuffed out at Pearl Harl or, at Bataan, at Midway, at Wake—nor the efforts of those who guard our security on foreign fields on the other side of the Atlantic. We are young—yes—but the dictators, who thought American youth soft, incapable of shouldering the responsibilities of citizens in a democracy, have begun to learn, and will continue to learn in the days to come that the blood of cowards is not in our veins. Fresh from high schools and colleges the youth of a united nation goes forth to fight again for the old principles of American. With the complex problems which confront the world and the nation at the present time there can In no confusion in this—America seeks no aggression for herself or any nation. America seeks but to preserve for herself the right to keep democracy at work. America seeks but the right for all nations to live according to their pattern of life. America seeks but the right for all people to live in harmony with their neighbor nations peacefully and unafraid. That we might live peacefully and unafraid is the reason American soldiers, and sailors, anti airmen, have always been willing to make the supreme sacrifice it necessary. That is the reason why today millions of American fighters are on tin many battlefronts of the world. That is the reason the workers on the homefront are enlisted for the duration in the war effort. We are all highly resolved that American ideals shall prevail- that American principles of government shall survive. With such resolution in our hearts, with such thoughts in our minds, the class of nineteen hundred forty-three leaves this night the Imbler high school to lx inducted into the service on the battlefront or the homefront—as and where we uncalled to serve.