by Gwen McMath
What kinds of memories come floating into your mind when someone says, “Junior High” or “Middle School?” First love or perhaps carefree times? Sports, cheerleading, or first dances? Maybe your memories are not pleasant ones. Were you the class nerd, or way too small or way to big? Hold on to those memories and let’s go back to the early sixties and take a look at my memories of that era, both good and bad.
I realize that most people’s Junior High memories weren’t very good, but mine were. As I got into Junior High I was able to overcome my perfectionism traits I had acquired in elementary school and began to enjoy my life. I attended Thomas Jefferson Junior High in Grand Prairie, Texas and this is the story of my time spent there.
Grief 101
Socially, starting Junior High School was both difficult and exciting at the same time because three elementary schools were combined together to form one Junior High. The three schools were William Travis Elementary School, James Fannin, and Mirabeau Lamar. Those of us from Fannin had to get used to being in a new neighborhood as well as a new school. Thomas Jefferson was much bigger than the elementary schools and there were two stories to the red brick modern building.
It took a while for the three elementary groups of kids to begin to mingle. I think the first time we really began to make friends with each other was when Sherry Tarrant got seriously ill. Sherry had been a cheerleader in elementary school at Travis and had older brothers that were known for their athletic ability as well as having a mother who taught elementary school at Travis. Sherry was a very cute, short blond who had a really funny personality and everyone loved her. One weekend she began to get dizzy and fall down. We all thought she was just trying to be her usual funny self but she wasn’t. She went to the doctor and we all soon found out that she had a brain tumor. She went into the hospital in Dallas to have it removed, but it was in a place that was not operable. The doctors put a metal plate in her head to relieve some of the pressure on her brain and sent her back home. For a while she seemed to get better and we all had hopes that she would soon be well.
None of us were really equipped to handle one of our young friends being really sick, let alone dying. We didn’t know what to do, or say, or even what the socially acceptable thing might be to do. I remember going to church one Sunday morning with Sherry at the First Methodist Church when she grabbed my arm and said, “Gwen, I can’t see!” It scared me terribly as I quickly led her around to get her back to her mom. That was really the beginning of her decline. She went back into the hospital and never returned. She would call me from the hospital and tell me how bored she was with nothing to do there, then she got sicker and said she didn’t want to live like that any more. I, of course, did not know how to respond. Her sweet face was drawn over to one side and she had to wear a wig. She was terribly thin and walked with a wobbly gait and could have looked almost comic had she not been dying. I know my own fears kept me from meeting her needs.
When she died we were all devastated. Her funeral was on a Sunday in November that year and was really heartbreaking for all of us. I know we didn’t have much regard for her family and what they were going through. At her funeral all of us girls sat together. I can’t remember where the boys were sitting. I only remember Greg Clock and Jack Kennedy sitting near the back of the church. I’m sure they were not supposed to grieve because in the times in which we lived then, men didn’t grieve and neither did boys. I find that really heart rendering now because I know her friend Ben Bailey had really cared for her and he probably never knew how to grieve for her. In fact, I think Ben became my friend from the mutual loss of Sherry.
At times I would see Sherry’s mom in the grocery store or in town but I never knew quite what to say to her or to her brothers either. Sherry’s death did make those of us who knew her a family of friends. I still carry the memories of her around in the back of my mind. The song “Sherry-Baby” by the Four Seasons was popular at this time, and I still think of her each time I happen to hear that song. She also introduced me to Heath bars and I never eat one that I don’t think of her. After I married my husband Charley, he took me to her grave in Arlington and I said a more appropriate good-bye to her. Her life had given me a gift, all the rest of my life I have strived to learn how to conduct myself when someone has died in order to be some small measure of comfort to the family. Her memory also helped me when I faced death within my own family. Now, here I am some fifty years later saying goodbye to more of those school friends through their deaths. It’s like once being part of a galaxy of beautiful stars, then one by one the stars begin to burn out and part of the beauty is missing. Thank you, Sherry for sharing your short life with me.
Grief 201
The most historic event that happened during my junior high years was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and it happened the next week after Sherry’s funeral. We were still grieving over Sherry, so having the president shot not ten miles from us made us feel like our world had exploded. This was a shocking, violent event in our lives because our generation was not accustomed to violence. The fact that it happened so close to us geographically made the event even more horrible. When it was announced over the intercom at school that the president had been shot, there was a deafening silence, followed by weeping and fear. I will never forget the silence and sadness of that day and it certainly took away some of our childish innocence. The song “Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel really addresses the mood of that day. It was written about the assassinations of both John and Bobby Kennedy and captures the feelings of young people during that time. Take time to listen to the lyrics the next time you hear it on oldies radio. The president being assassinated made us as young people never to be the same—our generation became a questioning and rebellious one from this event on through the sixties.
I would like to share my husband’s experiences during this time to add to my own because they were so historical:
When President Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas in 1963 the youth of the sixties began to question our world and look into politics for the first time. Most teens living at the time when Kennedy was shot remember what they were doing when they heard the terrible news. Charley remembered that after the announcement of Kennedy being shot was broadcast over the intercom, one of his classmates came out of class and blew his index finger as if he had just fired a gun. A teacher saw him and jerked him down the hall to who knows what punishment. Charley felt as if his innocence was jerked out from under him as fear of the future began to haunt him after that day. The junior high Charley was attending was Thomas Rusk and it was quite close to Love Field where President Kennedy was scheduled to land around noon. The principal announced that all students who could get permission from their parents would be allowed to leave school and go to the airport. Charley’s mom allowed him to go and he and a friend, Randy Robinson, hitched a ride to Love Field in the back seat of a Rolls Royce. Charley tells the story of seeing President and Mrs. Kennedy get off the plane as he was lined up with others at the chain link fence. Charley and Randy decided to skip school for the rest of the day. They got on a city bus and went to downtown Dallas. A man got on the bus and told everyone the president had been shot. Randy got off the bus to go home. Charley wanted to continue on the bus to downtown to see what was happening first hand. He recalled seeing policemen going everywhere. Later he went home, got his bicycle, and rode to Parkland Hospital where he learned they had taken the president. He remembers riding up to the two black limousines one of which had roses in the back seat and blood all over the seats. This incident alone shows you how different the times were—there was no security or guards anywhere. He couldn’t believe no one had stopped him. The next day (Saturday) Charley went downtown to Dealey Plaza and got a job with a camera crew from the Canadian Broadcasting Company to be a guide around downtown Dallas. He took them to Lee Harvy Oswald’s house in Oak Cliff, the Texas Theatre (where Oswald was apprehended), and Parkland Hospital. They then took him home and paid him ten dollars. That night he and Randy went downtown to the Majestic Theatre to see a movie. They got there early so they went over to the police station to see what was going on. There was a TV truck on the street that was hooked up to a camera somewhere in the police station. It showed a hallway with police going in and out of a certain room. Charley followed the cable up to the camera and walked along the hallway. He could hear police asking someone questions. He went back downstairs to get Randy who was too afraid to come up. On the second attempt upstairs he was stopped by a big policeman and Charley quickly ran out of the station. Later he learned the man they were questioning was Lee Harvey Oswald. The Dallas Police Chief during this time was Gene Curry, who was the father of a close school friend of Charley’s, Kaye Curry.
Charley went down to the court house to hear the verdict of the Jack Ruby trial, the strip club owner of the Carousel Club who was accused of killing Lee Harvey Oswald. He picked up a roll of film dropped by a camera man which he still has, as a souvenir. Charley stood behind Melvin Belli (Ruby’s attorney) on the courthouse steps as he gave a televised press conference. Several of Charley’s mothers’ friends called his mother to tell on him because he was not in school as they watched him on television. After the press conference Belli was followed down the street by several reporters as he went to his car. Charley followed along and closed the car door for Mr. Belli. He related that he knew all of this would be a historic event he wanted to be part of and I guess he participated pretty well for a thirteen year old boy! Our memories, though very different give good insight to the events and how these events became a catalyst for teens not to be able to live their lives as their parents had—our innocence was lost so we had to live a life that counted more than just for materialism. We became the generation that wanted to make a difference in our world with “love”, reaching out like a vine does to catch all it passes—we wanted to reach out, love, and change our world.
Rites of Passage
Junior High also brought about our first boy girl dances. The dances would be on Friday nights in the cafeteria and were big social events. All the girls would get their hair done at the beauty shop in the latest big hair do, and we would dress up in semi-formal attire or church clothes. We would have big, ugly bows in our hair because they were in style at the time. I remember wearing what was called a “twist blouse” to one of these dances. The blouses came in all colors, were long-sleeved, buttoned up the back, and had ruffles around the neck, sleeves, and bottom of the blouse. 45 rpm records would be played and we would dance around and around the lunch room to the music. There were lots of boys who were not afraid to dance so we had wonderful times dancing the night away—at least until about ten o’clock when our parents would come and pick us up. Usually after a dance the girls would all spend the night at someone’s house and talk all night and listen to more music on the radio. On one of those nights we played the radio all night long, I didn’t get a wink of sleep because I was not used to the radio at night and I just laid in bed and listened to tune after tune until morning.
Our daily schedules at school had changed since elementary school. The big difference was that we no longer stayed in the same class all day; we changed classes and had different teachers for different subjects. We didn’t have free time, and we had P.E. every day in an unairconditioned gym. We wore gym suits that were a bright blue one piece outfit with short bloomer bottoms, belted at the waist. It had our names embroidered on the back and it snapped up the front. We would wear the same outfit every day for a week and take it home to wash on the weekends. Boy, did they smell by that time! We didn’t shower after P.E. either. Good thing P.E. was the last class of the day.
We had some say about the classes we took. I took choir and I think we had that class every day. We gave performances several times a year even though none of us was very gifted musically. We sang a lot of religious songs that we certainly couldn’t sing today and I still remember some of the words to the songs. There was a boy in my choir class that I had gone to elementary school with named Alfred. He also went to my church (Prairie Heights Methodist on Pine Street) and when he had a birthday party in elementary school I had attended (actually my mother made me go). He was very tall and thin and a bit of a goober. His father collected garbage for a living so that didn’t help his image. He would often wear suits to school with the pants too short. He would wear white sneakers with the suits. Alfred had freckles and difficult hair—kind of like a Junior High Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. Because of his appearance and personality, he was made fun of unmercifully. When time came for a school dance, who should arrive at my door with his parents to ask me to the dance but Alfred. He had on his signature suit and when I entered the living room he rose up formally and asked me to the dance and told me he would buy me a corsage. Believe me; it would have taken more than a corsage to get me to go with him! I believe I mumbled something about having to be out of town that weekend. I could tell by looking at my mother and sister that they felt sorry for Alfred and wanted me to go with him. In retrospect, I regret telling him no. I wish I would have had enough character to say yes. I probably would have ruined my Junior High social life but it would have been the right thing to do. However, kindness or doing the right thing were not exactly on my priority list at that time. Alfred, wherever you are, please forgive me.
My favorite class was Art and my favorite teacher was Mrs. Pat Watson. I learned a lot of new things in that class like how to make a mosaic picture, and how to do block pritinting. I made a coffee table by using mosaic tiles on the top and refinishing the table but my Daddy did most of it. Mrs. Watson was a beautiful blonde who dressed impeccably and she owned the local movie theatre downtown called the Uptown. Now when I say downtown, I mean one street about three blocks long on Main Street. I got my first job working for her in the ticket booth. How I loved that job! I got to sit up in the ticket booth and watch everybody drive by. I knew who was dating who, and what kind of cars all the high school kids had.
Mrs. Watson had hired me because I was a special student of hers and she trusted me. She shouldn’t have trusted me so much because I let a lot of kids in the movies for free and gave away a lot of cokes, candy, and popcorn. Forgive me, Mrs. Watson wherever you are.
Going to the movies was quite a rite of passage for all of us in Junior High. We would meet boys at the movie almost every weekend and even sometimes meet new boys from another part of town. There were two movies I especially loved the premiers of. One was “Rock Around the Clock” with Bill Haley and the Comets. I loved it because we got to dance in the aisles to the music. The other movie was “House on Haunted Hill” because there was a skeleton attached to a wire close to the movie screen and at an especially scary part in the movie the skeleton went reeling into the audience from a cable on the ceiling and scared us all to death!
The movie theatre was beautiful to me. There were murals of cattle droving on the walls of the theatre, and the ladies lounge was very art deco with various colored lights around to accent all the curves of the art deco look.
There was a jewelry store next door to the movie theatre. Every time I went to work at the theatre I would look in the window of the jewelry store and admire a gold charm bracelet. When I turned thirteen my parents gave me that bracelet. I had a party for that birthday and got charms for my bracelet from several of my friends. I still have that bracelet and it is one of my most prized pieces of jewelry.
Of course we had all kinds of sports and games, more than in elementary school. During the week of homecoming, we had a day called Shirtail Day. Since we were the Thomas Jefferson Lions and our colors were red and green, we would draw a big lion on the back of one of our daddy’s old white dress shirts and decorate it with paint and glitter. Then we would wear it to school and all of our friends would sign our shirts between classes. We would wear jeans rolled up and loafers with white socks, and sometimes tie a green or red scarf around our necks to finish off the outfit. It was the beginning of getting mums for a game from a boy. The first mum that I got was in the eighth grade and I think I was absent the day the boy brought it to school for me so I didn’t acknowledge his gift well. This was another example of how unkind I could be. I think my real problem was not being sure if I was ready for a “boyfriend.” Whoever bought me that mum, forgive me. I really loved it as well as you but didn’t know how to express myself graciously.
Cheerleading was just as important to the girls as sports were to the boys. We couldn’t go out for cheerleader until the end of eighth grade and we had to get with a team of girls and try out in the gym in front of everyone. My team went all the way to Fort Worth to Seminary South Mall (one of the first malls in our area) to get matching outfits to go out for cheerleader. Our outfits were denim like material but they were red instead of the usual blue. We had a solid red culotte skirt, a striped read and white blouse to match with pearlized buttons down the front. We had hideous tennis shoes that laced at an angle to the side instead of down the middle, but we thought they were great and on the fashion edge.
We found out on a Friday afternoon after school who made cheerleader and who didn’t. I didn’t. The walk home that day from the bus stop was the longest one in history for me. I was devastated that I didn’t make the squad. One of my best friends, Beverly Lawson was a new cheerleader, and another of my friends Debbie Plattner, didn’t make it either. It worked out because we all three remained friends and when Beverly was off being cheerleader, Debbie and I still had each other to hang out with.
Sports were still a big part of our lives. In l962 the school took part in the pilot program of Kennedy’s President’s Council for Physical Fitness which was a series of several events that included sit-ups, chin-ups, push-ups, 600 yard run long toss, and others. Charles Redwine vividly remembered doing 538 sit-ups, when he was stopped by Coach Easterling because his butt was literally bleeding! Our most notable athletic accomplishment was the ninth grade basketball team. We won our first game of the year, lost the second to Highland Point by one point, and then proceeded to win twenty four straight games, including a thirty two team invitational tournament in Mesquite and the prestigious sixty four team tournaments in Ft. Worth that included all the top teams of the state. The Ft. Worth Star Telegram wrote us up as the best team in Texas. The starters on this team were Gary Carter, Jack Kennedy, Johnny Joe Simmons, Charles Redwine, who were named to the all tournament team, and Greg Clock and Phil Harris. Also during this time frame, Cassious Clay became the most notable athlete on the planet, thanks to his gold medal in the 1960 Olympics and his later antics as Muhammed Ali. Don Meredith was the first in a long line of great Cowboy quarterbacks, and Billy Bob Stewart was everyone’s Gopher football idol, in an era when Texas high school football was king.
State Fair Day was still a big day in Junior High but it had also changed. No longer were we content to just go with our girl friends. We would usually meet up with the boys so we could ride the midway rides with them. One boyfriend, Mike Peterman was especially fun to ride with and I enjoyed another day at the fair with a friend named Melvin Salisbury.
As well as making new friends in Junior High School there was a new neighborhood to learn and explore. I learned it so well I could still tell you where my friends Beverly Lawson, Debbie Lackey, Debbie Plattner, Celeste Henderson, Marty Alexander, Nita Brown, Judy Scott, Ben Bailey, Billy Stiles, Billy Midkiff or Greg Clock lived. There were two types of houses in this neighborhood, Most of the houses were small wooden frame houses like my own neighborhood but there were a few streets that had brick houses. It was certainly not a wealthy part of town; it was probably lower middle class. There was a brand new Tom Thumb supermarket in the neighborhood and some of the first apartments called Skyline Apartments, which had a pool. Across the street from these buildings was the Prairie Dog Drive-In, one of the first teenage hangouts. It was the first time in our lives that our parents didn’t know the families of everyone we hung out with, so I got to observe families that weren’t exactly like mine. There were some divorced families and some families that were unhappy, with parents that had drinking problems. Nearly every weekend someone would have some kind of a party. Of course, most of these parties had to do with our raging hormones. There were lots of boy-girl parties where spin the bottle was the main game. However, there were slumber parties where we might try smoking cigarettes or something more decadent. One slumber party at Debbie’s house found us deciding in the middle of the night to push her mom’s car out of the driveway and start it up to take it for a joy ride. Everything went well until we came home and were caught as we were pushing the car back in the driveway. How we did lack for brains!
Speaking of lacking brains, it was during this time that a few of my friends discovered what sniffing glue could do for you. They would go buy some airplane glue and sniff it in a bag in some vacant lot, and then have a great time while they were high. They would even come over to my house after they had been sniffing glue with glue all over their hands. Of course, we just thought this was funny, not dangerous. My mom even knew what they were doing but this was before the days of addictions, so we just said well maybe you shouldn’t be doing that. I don’t think it was a long-lasting habit or that they ever really got addicted to it, but I’m sure it destroyed lots of growing brain cells.
There was a brand new YMCA building in the neighborhood and we had a great Junior High group there. We would have a meeting every Tuesday night and after the meeting we would have a dance or go swimming. Unlike the school dances, it was not unusual for the girls to dance together and the boys to stand around and watch. We like to do line dances similar to the stroll to music like “Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain.” In the eighth grade the twist was the popular dance and we danced to Chubby Checker’s twist songs. A highlight for me was when I won the twist contest. The prize was a Chubby Checker album. Once when we all went swimming, the boys spent all their time dunking the girls. I was a very poor swimmer and had been dunked so many times that I was literally about to drown. I was going down for the third time when someone realized I was really in trouble and saved my life for me.
Every spring we would go to YMCA camp for the weekend. We would go to a lake and stay in cabins. The first year we were not paired off but by the eighth grade it was quite an education. We would wander all over the place at night and there were lots of empty tents on the property. I think I was pretty naïve until that weekend and I realized just how much some of my friends liked each other.
Many of us from Fannin usually rode the bus to school or sometimes our parents would take us and pick us up. I personally loved riding the bus since it was a novelty to me at the time. Over the years the novelty wore off, but at the beginning I loved it. I think I lost my desire to ride it when on the last day of the seventh grade, as kids were yelling and throwing papers out of the bus celebrating the last day of school. The bus driver got fed up with us and stopped the bus. He made all of us get off the bus on the highway close to the Twin Drive Inns (you know the ones that showed the first porn in our area) and close to the sign that read, “Thanks again for helping O.L. Nelms make another million!” and we had to walk the rest of the way home. It was a long way. Today’s kids would be yelling lawsuit but we were unaware of our rights back then as well as being more afraid of what our parents would do to us than our rights. I’m sure we looked like a band of defeated delinquents as we trudged down the highway sure to get in more trouble when we got home.
In the summer between the seventh and eighth grades and the summer after the eighth grade there were baseball games to go to at night. The biggest field was close to a public swimming pool so some kids would go swimming all day and then to the games at night. These games put us in contact with kids from other Junior High schools. We got to know lots of new kids that we would later become good friends with in high school. We would still have to have our parents take us and come back and get us or a lot of times parents would stay to watch the games. At this time you could get a drivers license at fourteen so a few of the boys were getting their driver’s license and some of them were even getting cars. I know Richard Martinez got a 1962 Chevrolet that was green, and Ben Bailey got an old Ford or Chevrolet that was restored and painted a deep red. The summer before starting high school was really a magical one for me. I think this was when I decided I was ready for a boyfriend. One of my girlfriends, Beverly had a big, old burgundy Cadillac and we would ride around with her sisters Judy and Barbara when they would let us. The back seat was huge and had cigarette lighters on both sides of the back seat. That really impressed me. Each person in the car would donate a quarter for gas and it would fill up the tank. Riding in that big Cadillac was so exciting for me. It was like the scenes in the movie American Graffiti of kids driving around town. One of Beverly’s neighbors, Ricky would also take us riding around in his Mustang.
Junior High was both the best and worst of times. I think we may have been the first generation of teenagers that had too much freedom. Most of the things I did were innocent, but a few weren’t. I have many regrets about the ways I treated people. I was always a bit of a snob and liked to make fun of people. I don’t know if I would have done the things I did regardless of the times, or if the times contributed to them. Either way, I know I loved my Junior High years and will always remember with fondness the many friends and firsts those years of passage brought to my life. I know those memories added to the person who I have become. I think the death gave me empathy for people in sorrow and pain. The assassination of a president showed me we can live through horrible events in our nation and survive. The Alfred episode probably contributed to my becoming a special education teacher for part of my life. I know those memories have given me a lifetime love of children of all ages. Since Junior High I have been and continue to be on many school buses and I have never again thrown paper out of the windows! Working at the movie theatre began a lifetime love of movies for me. The traditions of the times were somewhat silly by today’s standards but doing the same things year after year has made me love celebrating holidays and celebrating life on the happy occasions. The most important remembrance is the friends, because I had so many friends way back then. I still have a wide variety of friends that have enhanced my life over the years. I still feel close to so many of those people in Junior High even though it was a life time ago.
Now, so many years later, there have been many deaths besides Sherry Tarrants. Marty Alexander, Douglas Lane, Freddy Townley, Linda Lantrip, Judy Woods, just to name a few. It is sad to note that Thomas Jefferson Junior High School is no longer an open school. The building is there but there have been no students for many years. May we all continue to be joined together by our memories of that time and place.
Contributing writing and information:
Bill Stiles
Charles Redwine
Helen Sramek