Pekin High School - Pekinian Yearbook (Pekin, IL)

Page 6 text:

FOREWORD But a few years more and the banner of civilization will have passed completely from the hands of the generation represented by our fathers and mothers into the hands of an oncoming generation of which we of the graduating class of 1934 are members. This banner represents a sacred trust and duty which we cannot evade and which we should have no desire to betray. The present year, together with the past four and the ones immediately in the future, in all probability will be looked upon by historians of the future as marking the greatest crisis to date in the history of the human race. They will be looked upon as dating the passing of one era and the beginning of a new one. Under this new order the individual who does not know thoroughly some one craft, art, science, profession or business, together with its relationship to human society, will be unable to compete with his or her more competent fellows. Individual efficiency will win greater worthwhile and self-satisfying rewards than ever before. These are our days of preparation for the responsibilities about to be transferred to us. If we permit ourselves to become discouraged by a period of unemployment for many, to the point of failing to fit ourselves to the highest degree attainable for the pursuit of some one vocation, as individuals, we will pay a greater price for our failure and inefficiency than was ever before paid as a penalty by the inefficient. That knowledge is power is almost axiomatic. It was true in the passing era. It will be still more true in this new one, which will make an imperative demand on each and every adult to know some one thing and know it well. Therefore, let us, after leaving our high school classrooms, keep ever in mind this need for specialized knowledge and, while we keep awake for the reception of truth in general, strive diligently to perfect ourselves in some one line of human knowledge, work, or activity, that we may live as self-supporting humans, express ourselves to an objective world, and play a worthy part in the new era now unfolding before our gaze.

Page 8 text:

ur School We, the P. C. H. S. students, sing, School of the Celestial City on the shores of Illinois.” Pekin is a peaceful and prosperous little city. But well might we add celestial” to the school and sing with true conviction and firmness, celestial school.” We love its exterior, its interior. All of it is a part of us! How many of us have ever stopped and looked at our school—actually looked? If this were done, we would find a stately building, standing stal-wartly before us, a structure of grandeur and beauty. Many times we have unconsciously enjoyed the touches of Mother Nature surrounding it—the spreading lawns and beautiful shade trees, especially when spring fever was prevalent. To some passer-by, it may mean only a mass of mortar, beautifully designed, with Fergie’s” ever-shining windows peering out upon him. As students of P. C. H. S., we, too, appreciate this beauty, but we may also fittingly connect something to it. To us, those bricks may be golden bricks. They may represent our ideals of loyalty, of a spirit of united action and earnest service”, of elevated standards, and the mortar binds us and our ideals in a true fraternity” and a harmonious spirit. With such an exterior, who could hesitate to enter the building? As we pass over the threshold, we enter a little world in itself, where all, step by step, are gradually working toward their goal. Let us visit some of the prominent places in the interior of the school. As we wind our way through the corridors, we cannot help but be impressed by their cleanliness and orderliness, a fact which in itself makes our school excel many others. All about us lie many of our dreams, some completed, some unfinished. Our beautiful auditorium has provided splendid