ABOUT THE AUTHOR….
 Most Loyal Maroon Jacket |
Alisa Stingley is a Special Project writer for THE TIMES
newspaper in Shreveport, LA. She has
been with THE TIMES for a long number of years. In high school, Alisa was on the Ricochet
staff, our school newspaper, and was Editor (imagine that!) served as a Maroon Jacket for 4 years
and was awarded Most Loyal Maroon
Jacket. She also was on the
Volleyball team for 4 years, member of the OEA, National Honor
Society and was named Outstanding Jr. English Student. I always enjoyed Alisa and even though I
have not seen her since our reunion in '94, I do still appreciate her and thank
her for allowing me to place this article into the AHS ALUMNI WEBSITE MEMORIES. |
Class of '74
Student's lives shaped by
small-town Southern upbringings
By
Alisa Stingley
Copyright 1994
(This article
reprinted from the June 21, 1994 edition of THE TIMES with written
permission from Alisa Stingley, special projects writer of THE TIMES).
ATLANTA, Texas -- Our class song
was Seals & Crofts' We May Never Pass This Way Again. But, we did. We came together again on a warm and muggy night in early June,
just like the warm and muggy night in May 1974 when we graduated from high
school.
There
were 175 of us then, kids who were products of small-town Southern
upbringings. And some 50 or 60 of us
came to this 20-year reunion to see what we had made of ourselves.
Now
we are insurance salesmen, paper mill workers, nurses, homemakers, oilfield
technicians, furniture makers, fiction writers, schoolteachers, neonatal case
managers, corrections officers, electric co-op linemen, entrepreneurs, real
estate executives, bank vice presidents, interior designers, HIV/AIDS case
managers, secretaries, associate pastors, aircraft mechanics, tax auditors, electricians,
reporters and steelworkers.
Those
who had once gone kicking and screaming into adulthood had become quite
respectable. (There are no known prison
inmates among us. Even the classmate
considered most likely to be criminally charged now works in the public sector
and has three children and one grandchild.
His plans for the future include becoming Sheriff of the county.)
We
were born in 1955-56 and truly grew up like Opie in a little town like
Maberry. As first graders some of us
ate our brown-paper sack lunches sitting on the huge roots of an old oak tree
in the middle of the grade school playground with Miss Shine watching over us
like a guardian angle. She was old even
then, and kept her long, white hair neat in a bun.
Many
of those first-graders finished twelve years of school together, something so
rare in today's mobile society.
We
remember when Kennedy was shot. And
then Bobby and Martin Luther King, Jr. But were too young to realize the
significance of events happening around us.
The
class of '74 was the first to complete four years of high school fully
desegregated. We did not think much
about it and got along, mostly, even if the school board did away with our
proms, afraid a black boy would ask a white girl to dance. Still, only two black classmates attended
the reunion.
We
debated Vietnam once in English class.
Even as children of conservative, flag flying parents, we sensed the war
was a mistake. Hippies? Hardly.
Too young. And by the grace of
birth, too young to be drafted.
But,
we didn't dwell much on the weighty world matters. We cruised the Circle Inn (and circled and circled it) because we
did not have a McDonald's. There was
sometimes too much drinking and a little marijuana but we were not tempted by
the lethal life-destroying drugs that prey on kids today.
We
did not enter the doors of Atlanta High through a metal detector. If you got sent home it was because your
hair was too long (for the guys) or your skirt more than 3 inches above the
knee (for the girls).
The
dress code, however, did allow
bell-bottoms wide enough to hide a couple of schnauzers.
Our
worst offenses then? Some of the boys
got caught rolling dice on the auditorium stage a few days before
graduation. Some of the girls put Joy
soap in a home economics assignment (spaghetti) and sent it to the school
office staff.
By
the summer of 1974, Richard Nixon was on his way out of office and we were on
our way to college and careers and marriage and families.
We
were all going to keep in touch. We
didn't. That's what reunions are
for.
There
were some classmates working on their second and third marriages and some on
their third and fourth children. Some
had sparred with the demons of adulthood - life threatening disease, mental
illness, alcoholism - and some had won.
There
were streaks of gray ("it's frosted," quipped one female classmate)
and other physical changes. One boy who
weight 155 pounds at graduation now tips the scales at 235. Nobody recognized him. He got the award for most changed.
Some
hadn't really changed, on the inside.
One classmate, a little unstable after too many reunion toasts, fell
backwards into a bed of begonias. It
was just the sort of thing he would have done in high school. We all looked at each other and smiled.
And
we looked around the room for the ones that should have been there and weren't
there and will never be at any more reunions.
They
won't pass this way again, except in our memories.