Central High School students Archives

June 22, 2010October 23, 2011

Terry Kitchen and The Ghosts of Central High School

Terry Kitchen, Class of 1970, and athletic director of Central Junior High School (our OLD Central High School) was one of my stops when I toured the school last fall.

Kitchen was a standout athlete at Central in his day and went on to play baseball at SEMO. He’s been with the Cape school system for more than three decades.

Some of those trophies just didn’t want to leave

I have to admit that I was just going through the motions when I talked with Kitchen. I nodded politely when he went through a litany of athletes who had passed through the school. Then he mentioned the Ghosts of Central and my ears perked up.

With little prodding, he launched into a tale that sounded like something Mississippi story-teller Jerry Clowers would cook up, including the Southern drawl and the speech cadence of a tent revival preacher.

I immediately kicked myself for not being in a better position. Kitchen was severely backlit, so a lot of detail is lost in the shadows. Still, this is one of those stories that doesn’t need visuals. (That’s a tough admission for a photographer.) Kitchen’s voice carries the account.

Watch the video to see what I mean.

Terry Kitchen’s Ghostly Encounter

Gallery of team photos

Here are a gallery of photos that Kitchen rescued from the trash when the school was being transformed from Central High School to Central Junior High school.

June 13, 2010November 2, 2023

Bill’s Transition to Jacqie

When I first cranked up this blog and started connecting with folks from the past in Cape, Wife Lila and I got this short message on Facebook:

Hi lila and kenny. Its bill jackson but if you have facebook, you will discover that many changes have taken place. It seems that after all these years I am more comfortable as Jacqie, my female half and counterpart. Florida is much more familiar with this than cape. The reunion should be very interesting.

Bill Jackson, Class of 1966

I remembered Bill. He played sports and was active in music. Lila, being in the same class, not only knew him, he was her first high school date. The dating thing didn’t go on long, but they became close friends working as lifeguards and swimming instructors at the Cape Pool and the Natatorium.

Jacqie in St. Louis

In October, we met up with Jacqie at the Bar 5 to see her perform Karaoke. Her story of the transition from Bill to Jacqie was interesting enough that we made arrangements to meet when we came back to Cape in the spring.

I photographed Bill on the riverfront on Saturday, then interviewed his female counterpart on Sunday. To answer the question that I know you WANT to ask, Jacqie describes herself as “a heterosexual male cross-dresser.”

Watch the video. It’ll explain a lot.

Bill’s Transition to Jacqie

Jacqie will be attending the reunion on June 25-26.

June 10, 2010April 1, 2012

Cape Central Music

I didn’t have much to do with Central High School’s music department. I could barely play my radio, let alone an musical instrument.

Mother used to make the argument, “Learn how to play the piano and you’ll always be popular at parties.” Somehow or another, I don’t think it would have made much difference in my case.

I ran across these two photos of Dale Williams, head of the music department. The 1964 Girardot was dedicated to Mr. Williams (1926-1964) and to Joycelyn Hook (1946-1963, Girardot Literary Editor Elect).

I couldn’t find anything in The Missourian archives that gave any more information about the circumstances of their deaths. Joy was mentioned in a story April 5, 1963, for winning two of three A Division debates she was in. It looks like she might have been partnered with Helen Miner.

Music at Central High School

When I was in Cape last fall, I toured our old high school, now a junior high school. I shot these photos in the music department.

Gallery of Music Department Photos

Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to step through the photos.

May 26, 2010January 11, 2012

Typing Class at Central High

When I toured what we think of as Central High School last fall, I went into what had been the typing classroom. Mrs. Bedwell, the communications arts teacher, said the green typing desk, green cabinets and shelves were left over from our era.

I didn’t take a typing class. My Dad had a typewriter, and I started pecking at it when I was in about the first grade, definitely long before I was exposed to cursive writing.

Drudge work improved vocabulary

My handwriting was so bad that my dad, who had beautiful writing, made me do exercises to improve it. He’d have me do page after page of cursive exercises, then graduated to make me copy the dictionary. My writing didn’t improve, but my vocabulary sure did.

Pre-computer-age spellchecker

This, my child, is what a mid-20th-century spell checker looked like. It operated on a form of sneaker-net. If you weren’t sure how to spell a word, you got your tail off the chair and walked over to this big book. The bad thing is that you had to sort of know how to spell the word before you could look up the spelling of the word. It did not run on batteries and only one person could access it at a time (unless you were both looking for the same word).

1964 Typing Teachers

It wasn’t mentioned in The Missourian or the yearbook copy, but this 1964 Girardot photo of Central’s Business Department indicates there was some horrific accident that resulted in Lucille Adams’ body being grafted to Katheryn Wulfer’s head, and her fingers to become implanted in Cornelia Gockel’s shoulder. Jerry Wommel is pretending not to notice.

1964 Typing Club

The 1964 Girardot photo of the Typing Club doesn’t indicate the students were present when the accident involving the typing teachers occurred. The 1965 yearbook doesn’t list a Typing Club, so the accident may have had some residual traumatic effect on recruitment.

1964 Competent Typists

These students were recognized as Competent Typists. It doesn’t say what they had to do to earn the title.

1965 Business Department

By 1965, everyone had their body parts in the right places. Mr. Wommel still looks like he’d prefer to be somewhere else.

Green cabinets were original

Mrs. Bedwell she had heard that the new gray desks were being manufactured by prisoners, but she wasn’t sure if that was true or not. The green cabinets were there in the 60s.

Classroom doors are the same

Here’s the entrance to the old typing room.

View from typing room window

Except for the new gym, the view out the window looks pretty much the same. I don’t remember if the covered walkway was there when we were in school, though.