Unity High School - Hi Lites Yearbook (Mendon, IL)

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MEN DON — A PART OF AMERICANA Mendon Unity High School The village of Mendon, first called Fairfield, was laid out in 1833 by Colonel John B. Chittenden. The name was changed to Mendon in 1839 as it was soon learned that a town of the name Fairfield already existed in Illinois. In 1867 Mendon was by special act of the legislature incorporated as a town, its boundaries embracing one square mile. The first frame public school building there is any record of in Mendon stood on the lot where the Town Hall now stands. Mendon Township High School was erected in 1918-1919. In 1948 the Com- munity Unit School District Number Four was organized. The three small high schools—Loraine, Lima, and Ursa—were disbanded and all the high school students attended Mendon High School, renamed UNITY. 5

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 1 AM THE NATION ... Author Unknown I was born on July 4, 1776, and Ike. Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate. The bloodline of the would nun in my veins, because I offered l$Aeedom to the oppressed. I am many things, and many people. I am the Nation. J am 200 million people, living souls and the ghosts of millions who have lived and died for me. J am Nathan Hale and Paul Revere. I stood at Lexington and fired the shot heard around the wortd. I am Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry. I am John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys and Vavy Crockett. J am Lee and Grant, and Abe Lincoln. I remember the Alamo, the Maine and Peart Harbor. When freedom called, I answered and stayed until it was oven, oven, thene. I left my henoic dead in Flandens Fields, on the Rock of Corregidor, and the Black steppes of Korea. I am the Bnooklyn Bnidge, the wheat lands of Kansas, the gnanite hills of 7enmont, the potato fields of Wisconsin. I am the coalfields of the Virginias and Pennsylvania, the fertile lands of the Mid-west, The Golden Gate and the Gnand Canyon. I am Independence Hall, the Moniton and the Mer umac. J am big’. I spnawl fnom the Atlantic to the Pacific, thnee million squane miles thnobbing with industny. I am mone than five million fanms. I am fonest, field, mountain, desert. I am quiet villages and cities that never sleep. You can look at me and see Ben Franklin walking down the streets of Philadelphia with his breadloaf undeA his arm. You can see Betsy Ross with hen. needle. You can see the lights of Christmas, and hear the strains of Auld Lang Syne as the calendaA tuAns. I am Babe Ruth and the Wortd Senies. A am 169,000 schools and colleges, and 250,000 chuAches wheae my people worship God as they like best. J am a ballot dropping in a box, the roar of a cAowd at the stadium, and the voice of a choiA in a cathedral. J am an editorial in a newspapeA avid a letteA to a congressman. I am Eli Whitney and Stephen Foster. J am Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Billy Graham. I am Horace Greeley, Will Rogers and the Wright Brothers. I am George Washington Carver, Daniel Webster and Jonas Salk. I am Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman and Tom Paine. I am Phillip Brooks, Billy Sunday and Bishop Quayle. Yes, J am the Nation, and these are the things J am. J was conceived in Freedom and, God willing, in Freedom I will spend the rest of my days. May I possess always the integrity, the courage, and the strength to keep myself unshackled, to remain a citadel of freedom and a beacon of hope to the wortd. This is my wish, my goal, and my prayer on this my birthday, two-hundred years after I was born. 4

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THE FIRST 200 YEARS A knowledge of American history is an invitation to experience the ac- complishment, drama, tragedy and hope of an infant nation struggling to grow up. Sturdy, determined pioneers hacked away at the edges of a raw continent and, with blunders and achievements alike, modeled a country with a spirited nature and a united commitment to individual liberty for every one of its citizens. Americans, great and not so great, have given us a heritage to carry on and improve upon. Farmers and soldiers, industri- alists and merchants, dreamers and leaders, are all there in two centuries of progress. But the maturing isn't finished. You'll find the boundaries of growth as endless today as when our forefathers first envisioned them. You can seek out your own destiny with the wisdom and judgement which comes with re-creation of the past. Your knowledge, dreams and industry will carry on through many more centuries of living history.