West Lafayette High School - Scarlet and Gray Yearbook (West Lafayette, IN)

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Class dhstorw We've come a long way together—and yet it has taken so little time. As we look back it seems to have been just yesterday, or perhaps the day before, when we first met to begin our school days. Life was simple then. We were not troubled by great wars and world shaking events. Ours was a world of peace and plenty. Now let us glance back over those happy, carefree days. Our first school year was 1933 and that year was passed in the kindergarten room at Morton School. We played games and slowly began to learn one of the most important and least prac- ticed arts in the world—the art of getting along with one another. Real school began in the first grade and from then on time started to fly. One year was not much different from another, but we managed to keep track of time by noting how we grew taller, and lost our teeth and got new ones, and so on. We were dismissed a few minutes later with each promotion, and so we felt older each time. Probably the proudest moment of our Morton life came when we completed the fourth grade and ventured into the great unknown —upstairs. The next two years passed rapidly, and soon we were ready to leave Morton and go to Junior High. Our Morton memories are happy. We remember with pleasure the weekly convocations in which each class took part at sometime during the year; the Valentine boxes and Hallowe’en parties, complete with costumes; dancing classes; recess, when we played baseball and black- man and climbed on the Jungle Gym; fixing displays in the bulletin cases in the hall; learning all sorts of things; having our first taste of clubs and parliamentary procedure in the sixth grade; and, finally, being dismissed from Morton for the last time. We were the first class to go to Junior High as 7 B’s. That was a great day! We could now carry real notebooks and have a different teacher for every class. The highlight of our eighth grade was a trip by chartered buses to Indianapolis to visit the Legislature and see just how our state government is run. In the ninth grade, or freshman year, we really felt grown up. Besides being the oldest in the school, we began to study foreign languages and algebra, and found they were not as hard as we expected. We find that our memories of those years are many and varied. First comes the time in the ‘seventh grade when we went to school only in the afternoon because the new Senior High was not yet completed and those students used the building in the morning. We remember the teachers; the fire drills when we slid down the chutes; gym classes held in the ‘’“cheesebox’’; pep sessions where the cheer leaders always told us we yelled louder than the Senior High students; our first science laboratory work in the eighth grade where we drew muscle tissue, and the dissecting grasshoppers in biology; Senorita’s Spanish Class with Alfredo helping; reading ‘Lochinvar’ and ‘Evangeline’; ninth grade English classes where we gave reports and kept notebooks; algebra problems; the library; those lockers; all this and more means Junior High to us. When we entered Senior High, that impressive building on the hill, we were on the last lap of our school days. It seemed to us, then, that three years was a very long time, but now we find that they have gone all too fast. In Senior High we have learned many things and have had many happy times. We'll never forget the caf’, particularly on rainy days; talking in the library; the bitter wind as we wearily crossed the path and climbed the hill in what seemed like midnight on cold winter mornings; meeting in the Press Room; studying “econ” and “chem” and college algebra dur- ing our last year; then seeing boys of our class go off to military service and realizing that we were growing up—sooner than we expected. Now it is time for us to end our school life, and, although the past is happy we know that we must look forward into the future for— “The old order changeth, yielding place to new.” Page 26

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Ve Wh “They molded with full power and art An eager mind and yielding heart.” When we entered the seventh grade, it seemed that an eternity stretched between us and that bright goal — graduation. However, every class finds that the years go more quickly than we expect. We are seniors almost before we have a chance to think about it. Perhaps, because of the troubled world condi- tions, the last six years have passed more rapidly for us, the class of 1945, than they have for pre- ceding classes. Now that our time here in West Side is almost over, we begin to think about these past years. Although we did not realize it before, now we know that our minds have been developing right along with our stature. Many things have had an influence on this development, and one of the most important of these is the influence of class activ- ities. In the seventh and eighth grades at West Side, we organize in the form of ‘“home rooms”. In this way we learn how to conduct orderly, business-like meetings. In the ninth grade most classes produce their first play. The highlight of the sophomore year is the Sophomore Cotillion which is held in the fall. The class is really organized for the first time in the junior year. Officers are elected and com- mittees appointed, and we learn to develop our ex- ecutive ability and sense of responsibility. The junior class also always presents a play. The senior class, of course, has the most responsibilities of all. It publishes the annual, produces a play, plans Gala Week, and takes important roles in school govern- ment. Now we are proud to present to you the different classes at West Lafayette.

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Sponsor Miss Ruth Sinks President Dick Pershing Vice President Doris Newmark Secretary Mary Ann Harriman Treasurer Henry Ryder Page 27