Mount de Sales High School - Salesian Yearbook (Macon, GA)

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Table of Contents The Year That Was Faculty Activities Athletics Underclassmen Seniors The Last Word Advertising 2 Table of Contents

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1984 Salesian | | Mount de Sales High School Macon, Georgia Volume 29

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As | write this, the 1984 Salesian has already been completed. This is the last page to be sent off to the printers, and it gives me the opportunity to relate what experience has been for me and 29 other seniors who worked on the Publications Staff this year. Only those people who have worked together on a long and difficult project know what it is that they have done. In particular, Laura Powell (Production Editor), Don McGraw (Business Manager), and our Publisher, Mr. Kevin Dockrell, have been hard at work on this book since August, 1983. Along with those seniors whose photos appear on pages 34 and 35, we have published this 29th edition of the Salesian. |'m sure that many of our fellow students and some of our teachers must have thought that we were crazy to give up our afternoons and other leisure time in the making of a high school yearbook, and to some extent, they are right. None of us, myself included, ever imagined that the job would be as complex as it has been. For me at least, it's been the most demanding task I’ve ever undertaken. The demands on our time are only the most obvious. There is also an almost constant preoccupation with the hundreds of little details that must be done; | can remember being concerned about the spelling of names, the details of the football team’s season, the need for more and better photographs. | spent a lot of time making sure that messages got delivered, and checking on the progress of the various sections. We all expended a lot of energy, mostly mental. That in itself is tiring enough, but the pressures of upcoming deadlines only added to the frustration that we all felt at least once during the year. Still, it was more than worth it. It’s a terrific feeling when a deadline has been completed and mailed off on time. After this year, | can say that there is a great sense of purpose in publishing, and everyone who worked on this book shares in that feeling. For everyone who has asked us this year, ‘‘What's involved in making the Salesian,” it involves making a lot of decisions, and it takes a lot of work from a lot of people. First, it takes money. Don and our Business Staff did a superb job of organizing and carrying out our fundraising drive. We raised the money that we needed, and the whole process was smoother than we had any right to expect. After the Drive was completed, we began to make the hard decisions. We designed the cover, chose our type style, budgeted our space, and planned our deadlines. Because we receive our yearbook in the spring (when we can have time to have it signed, and when memories are still fresh in our minds), we cannot include events that occur after our final deadline, February 1. Therefore, Talent Show, Junior Senior, Literary Competition, all our spring sports, and other second semester activities from this year will appear in the 1985 Salesian. The single most difficult decision was choosing a theme and making it happen. It had to be an idea that lent itself to photographs and narrative, no small feat in itself. More importantly, for Mt. de Sales the theme has to be consistent with our past and our present, and it has to anticipate our future. It has to be an accurate reflection of who we are. When we came back to school in August, 1983, the physical changes that had taken place on the campus inspired us to choose changes as our theme. Change was all around us, and it has formed an important part of the fabric of our high school years. Throughout this book, the grey pages are our theme pages, speaking of those things which have happened around us, chronicling the changes that we, as a community, have experienced. It is fitting that this particular theme appears in the Salesian for 1984. George Orwell's novel 1984 foresaw a harrowing time when there would be no change; a time when everything was institutionalized, a time when change was the enemy of a dead and static society. If we have learned anything, it is that change is one of the few constants in our lives. Whether it is a sudden and wrenching change, or a subtle and underspoken one, we have learned to recognize it for what it is: the one thing of which we can be certain. Being the Managing Editor of this project has left me with a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling that we have made something which will last. | hope that reading it means as much to you as its creation has meant to us. begyy