Taft Union High School and Junior College - Derrick Yearbook (Taft, CA)

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T T • J T HIGH SCHOOLS and colleges throughout the country traditionally have selected some aspect of the passage of time as a theme for their yearbooks. Such a choice is but natural: at the close of the school year, when yearbooks are distributed, the fingers of the past and the future touch in a mo- ment that is by turn sober and buoyant. Today, in a world made omnious with the roar of guns and the crumbling of cherished institutions, a toast to the future cannot lightly be made. If the 1939 Derrick staff has selected the theme, To the Future, for this year ' s annual, it is because staff members recognize that the close of the school year is somewhat more significant than a time for nostalgic regrets or a glib and starry-eyed optimism. The theme is an expression of confidence in the permanence of American insti- tutions and the good sense of the American people. On the division pages of this book we have set a stage, the smaller circle of our present activities growing into the larger circle of the future. At the top of this page some of the figures of the division pages reappear, and above them looms the benign presence of a future activity. In the margins on either side of this foreword students reaffirm their faith in the future, and students, sketched In fu- turistic clothes, engage on many pages of the book in typical American occupations of the future. .is

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ry X tv . -V ' iA-t Published by the Student Body ot Taft Union High School and Junior College Taft, California

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J v. I W=i r THE TASK of dedicating a yearbook Is usually a bit precarious. Any annual staff faced witli this job is more often than not embarrassed by nches: there are so many jewels glittering in unex- pected corners. And too often, after a choice has been made, something of this irresolution appears in the final dedication,— a thin and wobbly refrain be- trays the early infirmity. After the selection of the theme, no such difficulty faced the 195 9 Derrick staff. Our dedication does not need to be tmiid or lukewarm; nor does it have to protest too loudly. For one can hardly had the future if one cannot say with equal confidence, To the Present! The 1939 Derrick, then, is dedicated to the present as it is concretely manifested in our own typical American community — in our industries and commerce, in our business and professional men, workers and house- wives, whose support was vital to the life of this book, m our institutions, — our schools, churches, govern- ment, and social organizations. The peculiarly Am- erican way of life is to be found, after all, not in the melting pot of our large cities, but in the thousands of smaller communities scattered throughout the nation. Only because we can say with assurance To the Present have wc the courage to say, To the Future. •- ' K T T W 111 N T