Jim Stone Archives

June 13, 2013

1965 Graduation Party

From what I read in the paper, today’s graduation parties cost more than wedding did back in our day. Here are photos from the all-night graduation party held at the Arena Building for the Class of 1965.

It’s my blog, so I’ll cheat a little and post a photo of MY date for the night: the future Lila Perry Steinhoff, at right. She gained points because she didn’t try to put a funny hat on my head like Margaret Ritter is doing to John Ueleke.

Harold Payne, never absent or tardy

The caption on the Youth Page on June 12, 1965, said “Harold Payne, the only member of the class to go four years to Central High without missing a day or being tardy reached his breaking point at the all-night senior party last week.”

Peggy Estes looks at Girardot

“Classmate Miss Peggy Estes keep semi-awake by gazing at the class yearbook.”

Called an all-night binge

The Missourian story called the party an “all-night binge.” I’d hate to hear what they’d call today’s extravaganzas. I’ll set the official Missourian story in italics.

Central High School graduating seniors, treated to an all-night binge by their parents, danced their way from last Thursday night after graduation to breakfast at 4 Friday morning.

Danced through the night

Most of them danced through the entire night, according to Mrs. Gale Heise, one of the head chairmen for the affair. An annual event, this year’s party was the biggest ever. And, according to Mrs. Heise, the seniors can thank all the parents for their complete cooperation.

Door prizes sparked the dull moments when the band took a break. Local merchants donated 125 items for prizes. And a grand prize, a portable television, which Lee Dahringer won, was purchased with money donated by parents. Fifteen prizes, including the big one, were given out just before breakfast.

Made a beeline for Arena Building

Two bands were hired for the evening – the Goldtones, which played for the first half of the evening, and Willies Band [the microfilm was sketchy here, but that’s what it looked like] which played until the wee hours.

The graduates, some with underclassmen as dates – made a beeline for the Arena Building as soon as the graduation ceremonies were over. The underclassmen were allowed to stay until 1 Friday morning. Then they left and the seniors were given a half hour to run home to change into sports clothes for the remainder of the party. [I was given a little more leeway since I had to go home to process the photos for the paper.]

Food was plentiful

Food was plentiful and free. Parents did the decorating, which followed a Mardi Gras theme. [The rest of the paragraph couldn’t be read.]

Some of the graduates dozed off for awhile, but the dance floor, said Mrs. Heise, was still pretty full at 4.

Head chairmen for the party were Mr. and Mrs. Heise, Senator and Mrs. Albert Spradling, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Knehans and Mr. and Mrs. Charles House.

Graduation Party photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the side to move through the gallery.

May 11, 2013

Cheri Pind

A couple of Cheri Pind portraits were on the roll with Tom Holt and his grilling extravaganza. I mostly knew Cheri as a cheerleader, which put her in a whole other social league. Since I didn’t exactly know them, I sort of categorized them.

Anne Buchanan had a classic beauty. Joni Tickel was the All American Girl Next Door who could look good even in those hideous gym uniforms.

Cherie had a twinkle in her eye that always said, “Go ahead and dare me.”

Sassy then, sassy now

Her bio in the Class of 1965 20th Reunion captured her sassy spirit. “Cherie does not work and never will, if she can help it.”

“My hair was beautiful”

“Let me state that I thought my hair was beautiful in high school, but since, I have heard talk about it,” the bio continued.

Here is a photo from the Class of ’65 Senior Banquet. The Missourian’s caption read, “Miss Cheri Pind just realizes that she is the one being described in the class prophesy being read by Chuck Dockins and Steve Seabaugh at the Senior Banquet Tuesday night in the Central High School cafeteria. Jim Stone, background, seems relatively unimpressed.”

Cheerleading skirt not too short

“I have terrific memories of high school and classmates, and I did not think my cheerleading skirt was too short!” she said.

As a male, I would have to agree with Cheri.

Cheri was the second from the left in this photo of the cheerleaders collecting for the March of Dimes in 1963. Norma Waggoner is, alas, keeping us from being able to judge the length of Cheri’s skirt.

Dancin’ in the parking lot

Cheri was one of the dancers to set the floor of the Teen Age Club on Spanish bouncing so much a city inspector shut the place down. Dancin’ feet gotta dance, so the action was moved to the bank parking lot at the corner of Main and Broadway.

Miss Pind is the girl facing the camera in the middle. She shows up in other photos of the parking lot dance.

October 1, 2012January 29, 2016

Decorating the Gym

No telling what dance these students were preparing for. I started to put names to faces, but realized the only one I was sure of was Jim Stone. These look like they were shot for The Tiger or The Girardot, but I don’t think any of them were ever published. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Since Jim was Class of 1965, it was unlikely he was decorating for the Class of ’66. Ditto the Class of 1967 Senior Prom.

Where are the coaches?

I can’t believe there’s no coach around to complain about abuse of hoop. When we visited Central at the last reunion, we kept expecting someone to chastise us for walking across the basketball court in our STREET shoes. Of course, by 2010, it was a junior high school and it was the practice gym, so maybe nobody cared.

Okeechobee High School Prom

I wish I had been able to put my hands on a photo story I shot at the Okeechobee High School Prom. I had a shot very similar to this in it. I decided I wanted to shoot an old-fashioned prom held in a gym, not a fancy coastal one held at the Flagler Museum or someplace equally high falutin’.

Okeechobee is a rural community about an hour west of West Palm Beach and on the north rim of Lake Okeechobee. I liked it because it had real trees and real people living there.

The two biggest industries were cattle and dairy farming and supporting retirees who came from the Midwest for the bass fishing. The high school advisor was very protective of her students. “I don’t want you coming out here and making these kids look like a bunch of hicks. This is a big deal for them.:”

I assured her that wasn’t my style and that I had grown up in a town not much bigger than Okeechobee.

I had to sell the story

My next task was to “sell” the story. Photographers worked for both the conservative afternoon paper, The Evening Times, and the liberal morning paper, The Palm Beach Post. The Post generally gave us much better picture play, so it was my first stop. The features editor was interested and threw out the name of the reporter he was thinking about assigning to do the words. His approach would have been exactly the one the advisor feared, so I said that I’d get back with him.

The two newspapers were separated by a walkway and a five-foot wall that was painted, we said, affectionately, Post-Times Puke Green. I crossed over.

The Times, being the underdog, liked to stick it to The Post whenever it could, so its feature editor loved the idea of snatching a good story out from under the morning paper. The only problem was they didn’t want to send a reporter. No problem, I said, give me a section front and I’ll shoot the pictures, write the copy and lay it out.

It was a blast. The student body was divided into the hippies and the cowboys. I knew immediately that I had made the right choice in not having The Post’s writer come out. He wouldn’t have been able to resist turning the kids into caricatures. I ended up with a couple of shots I like to this day. The best part was the advisor was happy when she saw the paper. I didn’t want to disappoint her.

April 4, 2012

Water Column Barometer

When Jim Stone and I visited our old earth science teacher Ernie Chiles on one of our trips back to Cape, Ernie mentioned a class project both of us had forgotten.

To back up a bit, I’ve written about the odd relationship Ernie, Jim, George Cauble and I had in class. Ernie was a teacher so new the ink was still smeary on his diploma. Jim was on his way to become a science whiz and George was destined to go to Rolla as an engineer. Me, I was just a guy who liked to challenge authority and hang out with George and Jim.

Jim is on the left in the photo above. Ken Trowbridge is in the middle. The fellow on the right looks familiar, but I can’t put a name on the face right now. Wife Lila says it might be Terry Hopkins. Click on the photos to make them larger.

The pressure (atmospheric) was on

As Ernie tells the story, we were on a chapter dealing with atmospheric pressure, which is typically measured in inches of mercury. Normal atmospheric air pressure – roughly 14.7 psi at sea level – will support a column of mercury about 30 inches tall. The same 14.7 psi will support a column of water about 34 feet high.

Jim, George and I said we wanted to prove it. This is where Ernie got worried, he said. “It would be an interesting experiment that would make the concept clear, but I was worried. What kind of prank had these these scallywags cooked up that was going to get me fired?” Maybe Ernie was contemplating what having a student fall to his death out of his classroom window would do to his teaching career.

Our motives, despite Ernie’s misgivings were pure. We had a chance to kill a class period doing something that would allow us to drop a hose out of the third-floor classroom, attracting the attention of the classes of Floors One and Two and we could watch Ernie squirm. Oh, yeah, and we could learn something that we already knew about atmospheric pressure. What’s better than that?

The experiment was simple

The experiment was low-tech. We had to fill a waste can with water, drop a hose in it to fill it with water, then hoist it with a rope to measure how high the water column was. A three-story building should give us the 30 feet we needed. Jim was in charge of the classroom side. I was supposed to get the hose filled with water.

I don’t recall Bill Wilson being in our class, so I may have Tom Sawyered him into filling the bucket and carrying it under Jim’s classroom window. I probably said something like, “Hey, Bill, how about doing this while I take your picture?”

George Cauble was even smarter

George Cauble didn’t even work that hard. While Jim was hauling hose and Bill was toting water and I was taking pictures, George was hanging out with Nancy Jenkins. Like I said, he was the smart one.

The experiment worked (sort of)

Jim didn’t fall out of the window, Bill managed to fill the hose with water, the water column came close to 30 feet (there was some kind of last-minute glitch of some kind, but it was close enough for CHS work), I managed to take some pictures that I held onto for almost half a century and we didn’t put an end to Ernie’s teaching career. Not a bad day’s work.