St Johns High School - Blue Devil Yearbook (Darlington, SC)

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Don t You Remember Just think, Classmates, we have been together for eleven years, and yet I can close my eyes and picture Miss Carrie's room on that never-to-be-forgotten day, away back in Septmeber 1914, when we first started to school! Don't you remember how scared we were? I know that I was and I know just as well that you were, too. I can see John Howie right now. with his bobbed hair—maybe that's where we girls got the style with his face shiny clean and his clean little smock suit, trying to hide behind his mother. And don't you remember, how huge Ben Ellerbe looked? I am sure he would have made two of any of the rest of us. We might have guessed that he would wind up as president of the class. Only that was one of the things we didn't know anything about or cared anything about, then. But no matter how big and handsome Ben was you can guess as to that by looking at him now’ he was not too good or too dignified to pull Claude Vaughan's curls. You remember those curls, of course; I am sure that you do. Ben didn't think he was looking when he pulled them. Maybe he wasn’t, who knows? But can't you still hear the yell Claude let out? It even frightened Ben. I wonder if Claude saved those curls. Don't you think he should have done so? What nice souvenirs they would have made for his classmates if he had them to divide among us now. I think what interested us most that first day was lunch. We thought the time for it never would come. Did two hours ever seem as long as those two hours from 9 to 11 that day? And don’t you remember what a commotion Elizabeth Boatwright and Virginia Baird caused by insisting on taking their lunch into chapel with them when they first got to school? 1 think they were afraid that if they left it in the classroom, they would never see it again. How many of us there were in the infant class which started off then, I cam only guess. The class has kept changing all the time as it went along. Besides those I have named, only Ada Hoole, Clara Mae Dutton, Willard Gray, Grace Vaughan, John Howie, Wesley Harrell, Leonard Smith, Elizabeth Player, Elizabeth Coker, Virginia Baird and Jessie Long have made the through trip from start to finish. Tom Pendergast joined us in the third grade. Dan Berry and Fred Sumner were fifth grade additions. William DuBose and Edwin Ervin have been with us since the sixth grade. The Class would certainly not have been what it is if they had not come into it. Don't you ALL agree with me? That sixth grade! Let us pause and think about it for a moment. For don't you remember that this was the year we had Miss Dargan as our teacher? Was there any year of all the eleven in which we got more out of school than this year under Miss Dargan? And don’t you remember that it was while we were in 6th grade that America entered the World W'ar? What a time it was! All of us wanted to help, of course, and don't you re- member all the excitement of those days and the boxes we packed and sent off to our soldier boys? Then the next year brought us to 7th grade and put us really and truly in the High School building, where we could see even the mighty Seniors day by day, and close at hand and discover after all they were human. Ammie Buchanan, Mary Louise Harrell, William Boatwright. William Hoole, Willie Ellerbe, Jo Edwards, and the rest of them. And don't you remember that this was the grade in which we made the acquaintance of Latin and Algebra? 1 wonder how much most of us have improved on that acquaintance since. T wcnty-N ine

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The City Beautiful Citizens of Darlington and future citizens of Darlington; 1 had, I admit, you in my thoughts and Darlington in my heart when I chose my subject for this afternoon—“The City Beautiful.” This is said to be a mechanical age; this land a birth place of a multitude of servants, which perform silently their labor at the push of an electric button and tend to hurry modern existence along at a jazz-like pace. However, this age is not making Americans a race of soulless ones, lost to the appreciation of the finer things of life; but our artistic natures are being stimulated and we are learning more and more how to appreciate to the fullest the beauties of nature, art and character. How lovely is the setting of this stage! The trees in the background, the sun slowly sinking in the west casting its lengthening shadows; the birds twittering in the trees all nature attuned in harmony. This stage itself, the gift of one who wished to conribute toward the cultivation of the beautiful in the hearts and minds of St. John’s pupils, will ever be a memorial to him. and an inspiration to us. and those who come after us. Development is going on all around us. Instead of the one-story frame, building for the public school, with its limited number of teachers, we have two handsome brick buildings situated on a campus unexcelled in the state, and a corps of teachers, the equal of. if not the superior of any school the size of this. Many of the old neglected buildings have been remodelled or torn down to give way to beautiful architectural structures and modern bungalows. Instead of the old dusty, dirty streets, we have splendid paved ones; instead of water polluted by germs, artesian water. These improvements which add so much to the health and beauty of our city are largely due to the efforts.of our “City Fathers.” On the square, the lawn surrounding the court house is lovely with its grass and flower» thanks to our Civic League! Our city is famed for its trees. The custom to plant trees annually to replace those blown down or removed is a worthy one and it should give us pleasure to make this contribution to posterity. Some people say they do not care to plant flowers and shrubbery at a place when they are there only temporarily, for others to enjoy. How selfish! It is probable that children from those homes are the ones we sometimes see breaking down the little trees planted with loving care and with the desire to add beauty to the lawns and streets. For these children the poor as well as the rich, a park, the natural site of which is nearby, would prove a blessing and they would be taught to appreciate and admire the flowers. Tourists and persons seeking homes are attracted by Darlington, since it is a beautiful, well- kept town, and naturally associate the character of the people with the appearance of the town. Where there is beauty and cleanliness there is less vice, sordidness, cheap music and cheap literature; and so from an economic standpoint it pays to have a beautiful city. Outwardly, all of these signs may seem to some people only the result of prosperity, but the change is not only on the surface, it is underlying and has a far deeper significance. We are learning to appreciate the beauty as well as the utility of things. Our aesthetic senses are be- coming keener. Some writer has said, “What is true. What is good, and What is beautiful are all the same.” So let it be known far and near that our own City Beautiful” is both true and good, as well as beautiful. -GRACE VAUGHAN. Salutatorian. Twenty-Eight

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And then Freshman High School. You will never iorget the experiences we underwent that year, 1 know. Certainly Wesley Harrell never will. For don’t you remember that this was the year when, in the presence of the entire class, and with absolutely no regard for either his dignity or his feelings, one of the teachers—whose name was not Bad”—slapped poor Wesley right in the face? I think it astonished us quite as much as it did Wesley. Miss Brunson said afterwards she didn’t see how ANYONE could have slapped Wesley, with his angelic face and cruls. And Wesley was not the only one who has special cause to remember our Freshman year. For don’t you remember how one day, quiet little red-haired Virginia Baird, of all people, was actually caught in the act of talking? My! My! How surprised we were. We had some notable recruits during this year, too. It was at this time that Martha Mclnnes, observing our brilliance from afar, decided to skip a grade and join us; and others who came into our ranks were Edith and Lena Dickerson and Grace DuRant. So we came to our Sophomore year, and very well pleased with ourselves we were, I must say. We were proud of our reputation, vain of it, in fact, so imagine how we felt when Willard Gray and Dargan Humphries, the class angels would you have thought it? were caught vulgarly chewing gum. We all knew the punishment for this, and it certainly was inflicted; nor need any one ever preach to us that punishment is not a deterrent to crime. So, thanks to Miss Magill’s watchful eye and zealous discipline, we kept a very good grade. And don’t you re- member the heartburnings we experienced when the Juniors and Seniors had their picnic and we couldn’t go? How envious we were. Charles Brown joined us in this year, also Ruth Privette and Mary Gibson. Ada Hoole left us to go to Spartanburg. If we were rather pleased with ourselves as Sophomores, what shall I say of the way our heads began to swell when we found ourselves full-fledged Juniors? How could we help it when we thus attained to the pride and dignity of men teachers, Mr. Miller and Mr. Gaines? How could we help it when we were at last to get out g Bulletin all our own. and the very best Bulletin that was ever printed, we were sure? And it was. of course. And don’t you remember the picnic we gave? Of course you do, you will never forget it, for surely there was never just such another picnic as that at Dargan's Place on Black Creek, with the Seniors as our guests, only don’t you remember, how we gave them to understand that for that day they were Juniors and we were the Seniors? Wasn’t it fun? Two of our old classmates rejoined us this year, Ada Hoole and Julie Law, and along with them came a lot of new members, Sally Winn, Oline Howie, Marie Taylor, Theo Flowers and Morris Flowers. One great sorrow visited us this year, for no member of the Class was more popular, none was brighter, none was lovelier than Julia Conder, who was taken from us, but who will live always in our hearts as fresh and young and sweet as when we last saw her. And now my tale is nearly done. Our experience of this, our Senior year, are still too close to be seen in retrospect. Later we will go back to them in memory and linger over them, longer, doubtless than over those of any of the other years. It has been a year of hard striving, a year of happy successes; our Bulletin being one success, our Senior Play another—but this is not the time to talk of these things. We will wait until some class reunion of the future, to recur to them. For the present, we can be glad that we have finished our school days with so many bright spots to which we can look back and so fewr shadows to cast a gloom upon them. No matter what the exact number of those who started in the class eleven years age are the number who finish today is larger—forty. Isn't that something to be proud of? Isn’t that enough to make us happy? —FRANCES EARLY. Thirty