Weequahic High School - Legend Yearbook (Newark, NJ)

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Principal's Note Editors' Note Dr. David E. Weingast You have chosen a novel format for your yearbook. A dictionary is an ingenious device for memorializing your high school days. This dictionary and its contents arc all too familiar while you are students at Wecquahic. But years hence, you will find that people, events, and places become blurred by time. Some things of epic importance today will become hazy and uncertain as they recede into the past. Then you will find this dictionary a special source of pleasure, of sentiment, of memories. There’s another facet about this dictionary that interests me and that has symbolic meaning. One of the best things this school can do for any student is to give him skill in research techniques. I.ct this dictionary-yearbook be your reminder to look it up in the years ahead. Whether you become scholars, researchers, professional or business people, you’ll serve yourself and your responsibilities better if you make it a habit to look it up.” If you want to speak with authority, if you want your opinions to be respected, then give your statements the strong underpinning of validated fact,-of solid research. Don’t guess. Ixx k it up. This is the real message of the Legend of January, 1961. David E. Weingast Principal Andrew Ettin, Leon Osterwcil Surely no editors of any large publication ever received more cooperation from their staff than we received from ours. All of the staff, from Mr. Tumin to the typists, contributed countless hours and immeasurable energy to the production of this Legend. It is they to whom we, the editors, are indebted and the)1 to whom we exend our deepest gratitude and thanks for a job done faithfully, conscientiously, and well. Adviser's Like all dictionaries, we. your dictionary, have made no judgments on you; we have merely recorded your words, your deeds, your usage. The information we used was supplied by your answers, casual or thoughtful, to our questionnaire. This is how we arrived at a definition of you. When your children are of high school age, you will be able to assess the accuracy of that definition. Were you really like that? Those books and movies and popular records you indicated were your favorites, do you remember them now? Those sayings, what about them? The activities you entered, the clubs, the offices you held ? Time will indeed tell. Edward Tumin Note Edward Tumin

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Dedication To Mrs. Louise M. Weinstein

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Preface In June, I960, with the work just completed on that term's classbook, the writing of the Legend for our class began. Starting with an evaluation of the purposes of such a publication, a steering committee composed of several members of the present editorial board and literary staff drafted a set of goals and noted elements in former yearbooks which were not desirable. Our Legend, it was decided, should not be a book which those who had not participated in a large number of extra-curricular activities preferred to keep in an attic trunk or on the bottom of a stack of old periodicals; therefore, the previous system of listing clubs and activities under the graduates' pictures, often resulting in long lists for some and merely blank spaces for others would have to be eliminated and replaced by a brief account for each student of the more important of his preferences, ambitions, and avocations, along with a mentioning of clubs in which he participated for several terms, offices frequently held, and academic excellence. Another egregious omission in most other classbooks, it was thought, was the complete neglect of the school and its curriculum, in addition to clubs, which frequently were not described at all but were represented solely by a picture of the members. The Legend, after all, should evoke vivid memories not only next year but ten and twenty years hence, and it should also serve as evidence to our children of the times in which we went to high school. No one would hazard a guess as to what kind of educational system will be in effect in the days of our grandchildren, but it was taken into account that come what may, things probably will be different. Years from now we want to be able to have something to refresh our memories, that we may say to the new generation, When we went to school, this is what we studied. A decision was made to include sections on the general curriculum, the programs and courses of the individual departments, the operations of our student government and the opportunities afforded us by the clubs, publications, and organizations as we knew them in our high school years. To these would be added chronologies of the important events of 1957 through I960 to serve as background material on our formative years. Finally, we wanted our Legend to be different from all the others. Certainly, however, this distinctiveness was not to be gained by adapting forcibly the contents to fit a bizarre, exotic theme which might have absolutely no bearing on the school, the class, or the era. It was evident that the format would be the most difficult problem confronting the staff. After summer vacation, during which several general articles were written and many ideas for themes, all of which subsequently were rejected, were formulated, work began quickly. Information forms were compiled and distributed to every member of the class. From these we were able to obtain a fairly accurate image of each person. We eliminated meaningless couplets and cold statistical information. We all realized, however, that little in the wav of final writing could be done until we had found a suitable frame on which to build. At last that frame was located. It could not be said that any one person actually produced the idea of doing the legend in the form of a dictionary; the idea seemed to be generated spontaneously by several staff members while checking the spelling of a word, and it captured everyone's imagination immediately. This was a form which never had been utilized in Wee-quahic and possibly not by any other school for its class-book. It was distinctive above all else, discouraging duplication as a format by its very nature, standing out from the hackneyed album-type books; in short, it seemed like a clever idea It was not until we commenced compiling the Legend that we realized the advantages and problems connected with printing a dictionary. In making our decision for the theme. we reasoned that a dictionary is the one book which every high school student has used, that because the listing is alphabetical the entries would be easily located and problems involving sequence of sections would be eliminated, that the set pattern of such a work would simplify the writing, printing, and reading. Soon, though, inevitable questions were asked. Since students would have to be described according to dictionary definition form, could verbs, adjectives and adverbs be used for them? If so, if a boy on the track team were to be defined as to run, would it make sense to say. The dog Henry Jacksoncd down the street?” What sort of problems would be created by the complicated typography, dictionary phrasing, illustrations of students, clubs, and homerooms (which would have to be done in keeping with the style), descriptions of departments, cross-referencing, and countless other highly involved technical problems? Our fears were allayed to some degree on these counts by our confidence that the skill of our not-then-selected editorial staff and Mr. Tumin, the faculty adviser, would save the Legend from any great pitfalls; yet there was another stumbling block. Dictionaries are not, for the most part, extremely interesting to the average reader, and surely the classbook would have to be interesting. Most of us have become intrigued at one time or another by some word we have found while looking for the correct spelling, pronunciation, or meaning, but unless extremely interested in verbiage, the majority will quickly replace the book on its shelf until it is once again needed; and the legend staff did not want this to happen with its production. The solution to this problem came rather suddenly when a staff member recalled a cynical, sardonic worl by the late Ambrose Bierce entitled The Devil’s Dictionary. The suggestion then was that we do our own version, but, find-ing Bierce more clever than we, the decision was to make use of his definitions (along with some written by a staff member who prefers anonymity) to relieve the monotony that otherwise could result from pages composed only of senior sketches. Thus we were ready for production. In writing the legend for the class of January, 1961, every attempt was made to carry out the theme naturally, and to make the book informative, enjoyable, and of lasting value. We believe we have succeeded. For the staff of The Legend The Editors 5