James Monroe High School - Echo Yearbook (Fredericksburg, VA)

Page 8 text:

Historic Fredericksburg, Virginia, nestled on the Rappahannock fall line. In Fredericksburg the ad¬ vancement of technology and the accelerated pace of living that it brings is slowly but surely seeping in through our small-town seclusion. As major cities on the East Coast from New York to Washington swell and expand, spilling over into suburbs until the boun¬ daries between one city and the next blur, Fred¬ ericksburg has sat, for the most part undisturbed, on the southern fringe of this growing megalopolis. Nevertheless, situated fifty miles either way between the capitals of our state and our country, we can hardly avoid the impact of the growth and progress around us. Fredericksburg is begin¬ ning to suffer from growing pains, and one of the places where it can be seen is in the halls of James Monroe. Whenever a bell rings, the halls are filled with a mass of bodies pushing and shov¬ ing, dodging and weaving to get from one class to the next. Students sometimes have to double up on lockers, and teachers have to shift classrooms from period to period, using another teacher’s class dur- ing his free period. Freshman homerooms have had to take turns missing assemblies because the auditorium will not seat the entire student body. If many students did not leave school on their lunch shifts, the cafeteria would not be able to serve everyone on two lunch shifts. Basketball games sell out because of the gym’s small seating capacity. All of these reasons and more are given for building a new high school for the city, but one very good reason is given against it — money. Words like “recession” and “inflation” are tossed freely around us every day. A dollar at McDonald’s will get you “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun” — and not much else. A dollar’s worth of gas will barely get you through the “cruise cir¬ cuit” from Pizza Hut, through the college, down Princess Anne Street, around JM, and back to Piz- IN AN EVOLV IN 4 Opening

Page 7 text:

States on August 9, 1974. Here he delivers his first State of the Union address. Vice President Rockefeller is seated behind. the sex appeal of Robert Reddford, or play tennis like Billie Jean King with one arm and and box like Muhammad Ali with the other. How many thousands of girls’ hearts will be shredded when Donny Os¬ mond grows up and marries? Can the Spring Dance possibly be any fun unless Kool The Gang are engaged to play? Obviously, if we measure success in these terms most of us are truly Born Losers. But is it any more realistic to believe you are a failure if you get a ‘B’? For at least one young woman, this belief was very real.

Page 9 text:

Pie-eyed Raymond Greaser gets creamed by Melissa Wiggins at the first pep rally. za Hut again. Taking a date to the movies will usually cost a minimum of four dollars, excluding a coke during the moving or a pizza afterwards. Consequently students at James Monroe are learning to have fun without spending money. Even the time-honored es¬ cape from pressure by star¬ ing out of classroom win¬ dows is beginning to fail us. Looking out we see a string of shopping centers stretching up the highway; on the other side, the hospital has almost doubled in size in the past few years. A bank in construction across from the new wing will soon be joining the 1 ranks of the city’s growing number of large buildings. G CO