San Juan High School - Greenback Notes Yearbook (Citrus Heights, CA)

Page 9 text:

As the Class of 1960 leaves San Juan, it enters into a world which is changing constantly. The present is full of fun and problems, and we are trying to make the best of it. This senior year has been very important in the annals of history; not only for us, but for the whole world. It started on September 4, pro- gressed through football games, basketball season, the Senior Play, the Senior Ball, Senior cut day, a wonderful Junior-Senior Banquet, and up to Baccalaureate and that happy-sad day when we will march up to receive our awards for four years of study. In the outside world many things have happened this year. The Rus- sians have seen the back of the moon, the Olympics have been to California, the Presidential candi- dates have been chosen, Krushchev and DeGaulle have been to the United States, Eisenhower has toured Europe and South America, and the crippling steel strike which held the country for months has ended. We have bid fond farewell to Mr. George L. White, our principal since our freshman year, and have welcomed a new principal, Mr. Relfe W. Leavitt. Another White, Mr. Lawrence A. White, from El Camino, came to replace Mr. Leavitt as vice-principal Several of the teachers whom we had in our years as underclass- men were gone this year, and al- though we missed them very much, we welcomed our many new teachers. Our fads, our friendships, and our ideas have changed this year. We dressed more like adults and less like children; we became closer to some of our old friends, and gained new companions; we studied things we hadn ' t thought about before, and made some changes in our way of thinking. Although our present is very important, it will be gone soon, and as we bid it good-by we must turn to the future. r

Page 8 text:

This book is dedicated to the seniors who are graduating from San Juan this week. To them, the past has been very important, just as the future is to be very im- portant. The past covers a great deal of experience and memory. For most of us, it began about the time that the Second World War began. Through the bitter period, we were unconscious of the history which was being made. Our inter- ests were confined to our home and family. When we were born, Franklin D. Roosevelt was President, but we didn ' t know about such things, and didn ' t much care about them. When we reached school, Roose- velt had been dead for three years, and there was a different man in the White House: Harry S. Truman. Then, when we were in the fifth grade, a man who was known for his skill at directing armies, D wight D. Eisenhower, tried his hand at directing a nation. By that time, we were very aware of his- tory and knew a lot about Presidents. Other things were happening too. The television, a thing native to our own generation, had be- come a powerful influence on our leisure lives. With TV came frozen foods in quantity, and the TV Dinner. We saw cars change from sedate, boxy luxuries, to flashing monsters with insatiable gas-tanks, then back to small, eco- nomical necessities. There were sad things too. The tragic floods in Yuba City during The Christmas season of 1955. The segregation conflicts in 1956. The Chicago school fire. The wreck of the Andrea Doria. We have grown and changed tremendously in the past; more than we will in any other period of our lives. We have lived our pasts, and soon even the present will become another segment of that past.

Page 10 text:

With only a few days and hours left of our high school years, we seek the future. We plan happily, and then wait to see just how closly our dreams will come to being realized. Our futures will all be dif- ferent, and will all be what we make them. Some of us will succeed grandly; most of us will be average Americans. We will spread all over the nation, even all over the world, and some will never return. Then, after five, or ten, or maybe twenty-five years, we will have a classre- union and compare notes with the kids we used to go to school with. Some of our numbers will become professionals; some, students at colleges or univer- sities; some will enter the service. Nearly all will marry, and of those who do, most will become parents. Life will be very short for a few, and very long for others, but most will live the three score and ten alloted us. The men will hunt, fish, build do-it-yourself projects, join service clubs, work or just loaf. The women will raise children, have careers, join auxiliaries to the service clubs, host Stanley Parties, work, or just loaf also. Some will travel to the ends of the Earth; some will never go more than a hundred miles from Sacramento. We will take over the P.T.A., the businesses, the churches, and do those things which the older generation now do. We will champion the March of Dimes, the Girl Scouts, the local bond issues. We will vote, and choose who will run the town, county, state and nation. And we will fight bitterly against anything which threatens our peace or prosperity. No matter what we do, all our efforts will be in the end directed at making things as good as possible for us and our posterity.