
Click here for
some history of this building before we got there.
Click here for the entire
roster of graduates of the OJHS graduating class of 1957.
Click
here for rare group photos of our
entire OJHS
graduating class of 1957. |
Except for those among us
who
moved to
Oceanside
after June 1957 or were bussed to school
from one of the neighboring towns
,
we all
came from one
of five local elementary schools to
a single
junior high, Oceanside
Junior High
School, on Castleton
Court (with a side
entrance at Merle Avenue).
At first,
in September 1954, junior high was not
such a wonderful world for
many of us; it was a
rather frightening and intimidating experience. |

When
was the last time you saw one of these?
Or the
junior high jewelry shown above?
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For
the very first time in those early days of the 7th grade, we no
longer spent our entire school day
a short walk from our homes
and
in the shelter and comfort of a single classroom in a relatively small and
familiar building, with only one teacher and a handful of other kids our own age. Suddenly,
most of us had to ride busses to
school, and we all had to move about from class to class, with about six
different teachers every day, interacting with
hundreds of other kids of different ages, in a huge building, pushing and shoving
(or more likely being pushed and shoved by bigger kids) through the halls and up
or down the one-way staircases to get to our classes in the precious little time
they gave us.
Our
7th grade year
was doubly scary; that was because that was the only year the school building (which was originally
opened in 1936 as a high school) was doing dual duty as Oceanside
Junior-Senior
High School, and it was particularly crowded. We were
the first and only 7th graders who had to
contend with those really big, post-pubescent high
school kids who really didn't like having us little kids around. (OHS
opened its new, separate building on Skillman and Brower Avenues in 1955 when we
were in the 8th grade.)
Nevertheless, in our early adolescent years, here at OJHS, we
began learning to socialize and interact with the opposite sex. Our jr. high school
helped us overcome this formidable hurdle of coming of age by offering us a
plethora of extra-curricular activities and by holding "teen nights" every Friday alternating each
week between our first awkward school dances and (remember?) roller-skating. Although
you could sustain serious humiliation from being seen falling on roller skates,
from a social point of view, the potential for embarrassment was a great deal
less and, therefore less stressful, than at those early dances.
Below are two photos of a typical class
– Miss Cowin's 7th or 8th grade Social Studies class
– taken the same day (it must have been
"take a camera to school day" or something),
circa spring or early
fall, 1955. How many of
our classmates can you name? |

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Do you
remember Chat?
Chat
was our jr. high school newspaper/magazine.
Started in 1932, by
the time we were graduated in 1957, Chat was published four times a year
and generally consisted of 26 pages, mimeographed. And it
sold for 15¢
per copy.
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The
June 1957 edition Cover art by classmate,
Carol Johnson |
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Most of us have a
Spindrift
that tells us who won our senior class poll in 1960, but how many remember who
won our freshman class poll in 1957? Well, the June 1957 edition of Chat tells us: |
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FRESHMAN POPULARITY POLL (June
1957)
Best
Dressed: Carol
Johnson
and
Rudy
Santoli
Most
Likely to Succeed:
Ellie Freed and
Dennis Deegan
Wittiest:
Felicia
"Flea" Morris and Artie Oliver
Most
Talented:
Ellie
Freed and
Dave Schwarz
Most
Popular: Felicia "Flea" Morris and
Tom Turner
Best Looking: Bev Barnes* and
Tom Turner
Did Most for
the School: Dorrie McKane
and
Al Carlson
Best
Athlete: Carole
Hassett* and
Rudi Santoli
___________
*
Congratulations,
Bev
and
Carole
― two
for two (jr. high and high school).
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And
just in case some of us were apprehensive about going on to high school (where
many of those really big kids who had intimidated us in 7th grade were), in the June
1957 edition of Chat, our
Principal, the very large and confidence-inspiring
William F. Helmcke, profoundly
assured us that although "high school work will be more difficult than
junior high, [it]...will not present
insurmountable
obstacles [emphasis added]," and for some unexplained reason, his
expressed wish for our success was cautiously limited (one may
wonder why) only to our "immediate futures." |
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And here is
what our classmate, Jill Slater, wrote in the same
June 1957 issue
of Chat about an
important part of our then impending junior high graduation ritual,
caps
and gowns: |
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Click here for the entire
roster of graduates of our OJHS graduating class of 1957.
(There are names there you haven't seen nor heard in decades.)
Click
here for rare group photos of our
entire OJHS
graduating class of 1957.
Weather in Oceanside, New York, on our Graduation Day, June
24, 1957:
-
High temp: 86.4F
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Low temp: 72.3F
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Average temp: 78.2F
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Dewpoint: 68.7F
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Wind speed:
9.8 knots
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Precipitation: 0 inches
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Our OJHS band at graduation, June
24, 1957 |
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Another shot of our OJHS band on
graduation day,
June 24, 1957, led by band
teacher, Ed Taylor, right. |
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Click here
for a special tribute to the memory of Ed Taylor, the
wonderful teacher who led the OJHS band. |
Copyright
© 2000-2018 by Howard B. Levy and
1960 Sailors
Association
Inc. All rights reserved.
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