Longmeadow High School - Masacksic Yearbook (Longmeadow, MA)

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QW, . You are now ready to be cast in another act in the greatest play of all-life. As you venture forth in this new role, remember that kindness and cheerfulness will add color, vitality and significance to your part. Play this part, at all times, with the Golden Rule uppermost in mind. Each individual has a job to do in this great p1ay. Do it in a friendly, cooperative spirit which in turn will add'meaning and happiness to your life as well as to the lives of those around you. - However, do not be afraid to think, to create, and to believe for yourself. God meant for you to be an individual with your own individual characteristics. Don't be ashamed of them. Continue 'to struggle. Thomas Paine once wrote What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly, it is dearness only that gives everything its value. If you attain one goal, strive for a more worthwhile one. Life need never commonplace and routineg it's all in the attitude and in f 'ew that t kes. L5 H L. SHINDLER Assistant Principal if Your twelve-year-long rehearsal is over. Your producers, directors and technical advisors have coached you through arduous months of learning and playing. You have missed cues, fluffed lines, encountered interruptions but you have progressed steadily. All you have been taught during re- hearsals is now behind you. Each one of you can play the role he chooses, and each role, though possibly not a lead- ing part, can be important. In this materialistic age, the props and settings too often seem to dominate the individual dignity of players on the stage-a lavish scene may get more plaudits than a well- played part. Sometimes we tend to judge not by accom- plishment and character but by properties. The script is yours to write, and you are audience as well as players. If you can relegate the props to minor places, put emphasis on character and individual worth, give credits for knowledge, skill, and service to the world, keep your respect for self and man, and for God, Who is your Final Critic, you will have mastered, not the art of acting, but the greater att of living. Play the part first! Trim the stage last. HUGH O. MACFARLANE Principal

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You will be portraying yourself as you face audiences throughout life from your stage. You will be both author and actor of the various roles you will be playing. It will be your opportunity and your responsibility to determine your parts and to act them. These are precious rights made pos- sible for you by those who fought and died to establish and pass them on to you. They are yours to enjoy, but yours also to preserve and strengthen for those who are coming after you. Who will you be and how will you portray yourself as your life unfolds and you go from scene to scene? No better guide has been offered to youth with your cultural back- ground than that contained in Shakespeare's famous lines: This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must fol- low as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. QUENTIN REYNOLDS Chairman-Longmeadow School Committee Seated left to right: Mr. Robert Brigham, Mr. Henry Frisbie, Mr. Quentin Reynolds, Mrs. Kyle C. Whitefield, and Mr. Richard Holter There is an excitement and a challenge in the realization that we as individuals have a wide range of personal free- dom in selecting the roles we will play in life. However, Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken suggests to some of us the weight of responsibility which attends our choosing one course of action over others. Indeed it appears that as night follows day responsibility for our choices follows our free- dom to choose. To grant this sobering premise immediately raises the question as to how we can select more wisely the roles we will play. Must we conclude only that our reactions at a given time will depend upon the situation and that When in Rome, we will do as the Romans do ? Of course not! But yet, how do we make better decisions? To fail to choose is itself a type of choice, a decision to do nothing. This re- quires no courage, no faith. There are three fundamental steps in selecting our be- havior roles more intelligently. The first is to secure and evaluate fairly the facts in a given case. It is often more difficult to face the facts than to secure them. The second step is to formulate the reasonable alternative courses of action suggested by the facts. To overlook a meaningful solution to a problem can be as detrimental in decision making as to overlook factual data. The last step is to try to predict the consequences of each alternative role. Two basic questions come to 'mind as we weigh alterna- tive courses of action. What effect will our behavior have on persons around us, our associates, our friends, our loved ones? What will be the consequences of the action upon us as persons, will our action make us wiser, more tolerant, more loyal, i.e., better human beings? Our answers to these questions will inHuence greatly our final decision. W. HENRY CONE Assistant Superintendent of Schools

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