FRANCES was a 1924 graduate of Northeast High School. She contributed feaure articles and book reviews at the "Kansas
City Star " newspaper before she moved to Washington in 1943. On June 29, 1974 an article she wrote appeared in the "Star".
It was about the 60th Anniversary of the building of Northeast High School, her 50th year Class Reunion and about her days
at "Thou Dear".
The article is as follows:
NORTHEAST HIGH SCHOOL 60th ANNIVERSARY
by FRANCES W. KERR
"It came in a plain envelope and the first sentence was a shocker: "50 years have gone by since we grauated from
Northeast High School in June of 1924." It was an invitation to the reunion of my class tomorrow at the Alameda Plaza Hotel.
My first though was that it couldn't be true. Then I realized that retirement parties, bald heads, grandmother bracelets
and moves to Sun City and Lesisure World are facts of life for me and my comtemporaries.
It was indeed 50 years ago since I last walked down steep Smart Avenue hill, from Jackson Avenue where I lived, past
Spruce, Kensington, Cypress, Elmwood and Lawn, to Van Brunt Boulevard where Northeast loomed up in its magnificence, four
stories high, a monolithic, many-windowed building, so different from the low, sprawling, windowless schools of today. There
were no houses on Van Brunt then, just vacant land on every side.
We moved to "the city" from Independence and I proudly enrolled at Northeast as a freshman, taking four "solids"--English,
algebra, Latin and ancient history and two "nonsolids," elocution and gym.
These last two subjects probably illustrate better than anything the difference half a century has made in the school
curriculum.
"Elocution?" you ask.
Yes, in 1920 young people still gave "recitations." I have my textbook before me--"Choice Readings," by Prof. R. M. Cumnock,
L.H.D., director of the school of oratory, Northwestern University. He wrote the preface in 1878, updating it in 1913.
Miss Helen Hobbs coached us to use a gay, light tone when we recited "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!" but to be solemn
and use "an effusive orotund voice" when we intoned; "Break, break, break---On they cold gray stones, O sea!"
These were recited with appropriate getures, but I think we seldom plesed her. Her prize pupil was a dainty child with
a mass of Mary Pickford curls.
PLAYTIME
As for "gym" (we never said physical education) Northeast has a splendid large gymnasium on the main floor where the
proms and after-school "mixers" (dances) were held, but this room was usually pre-empted by the boys. We girls played volley
ball and took calesthenics in the "little gym" on the ground floor.
I dread to think what a 13-year-old of today would say about our costume. We wore heavy black serge bloomers with at
least 2 yards of material in each leg, pleated at the waist and ballooning out at the knee where it was held with elastic.
(If this elastic broke, the bloomers fell to our ankles). With this we wore a white middy bluse and a black tie. Thus garbed,
we lounged in the little gym until Miss Nellie Stewart strode into the room and blew a shrill blast on her whistle.
"Flynn (fall in), girls!" she shouted and we sprang to attention in a single line, our backs ramrod straight for daily
inspection. Once a week we went to the big gym for ballet, with piano accompaniement. Miss Steward had graduated from the
famous Sargeant School of Physical Education in Boston and taught us all the basic positions.
Another of Northeast's assets was a wonderful swimming pool. Miss Stewart taught us to swim--the dog paddle, the face
float and the side stroke. She was adament about our keeping heads down while in the water and was in the habit of walking
along the edge of the pool, putting her foot, in its soft ballet slipper, on any head that protruded too far out. I lived
in dread of that foot being placed on my head, so one day after class I went to her office and told her that my mother sent
her greetings and said for me to tell her I was Lucy Whitney's daughter. Miss Stewart's blue eyes lighted up.
"Why, you dear little thing," she cried. " I went to school with your mother." I never had to worry about her stepping
on my head after that.
An innovation at Northeast was a complete apartment--living, dining, bedroom, kitchen and bath--built in one corner of
the top floor on the theory that home economics students could actually practice "keeping house." It evidently proved impractical,
for the space was later turned into classrooms.
The school offered four years of Latin, French and Spanish; also Greek and later German. Northeast graudates could hold
their own at the Ivy League colleges and the best universities. The faculty was outstanding and most of those we knew stayed
until they retired.
Instead of blue jeans, we girls wore middies or sweaters with white collars and cuffs with wool skirts. By my sophomore
year skirts were dropping toward the ankle and we began to wear silk stockings. Nylons would not be in our wardrobes or our
vocabulary for nearly 20 years.
Ours was the era of the flapper, gin flasks and wild parties, but I didn't know anything about it until I read articles
and books a generation later. I never head of Scott Fitzgerald in highschool. While he and Zelda were cavorting on the Riviera
and in Paris, we were studying "Ivanhoe" and Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" and going to silent movies at the Gladstone, the
St. John and the Benton.
The only movie I remember is "The Sheik of Araby" with Rudolph Valentino and the reason I remember it is because my father
forbade me to see it. But I went to a Saturday matinee at the Benton with my friend Virginia Belle. I couldn't understand
what cause all the hullababloo, but I agreed with my friends that it was "keen."
Many of my classmates were not so insulated from the world. Some girls copied the hair styles of the movie stars and
plastered spit curls on their cheeks and there were boys at Northeast whom we called "cake-eaters," who wore bell-bottom trousers
and jelly-bean hats (bright felt with brims turned straight up in front).
PLEASANT PASTIMES
One boy had a yellow jalopy with a rumble seat, wore a raccoon cot, smoked cigarettes and it was said, dated girls who
were "fast." He was a perfect prototype of the John Held, Jr. cartoons that would later become a trademark of the New Yorker.
But the actual era of the flapper with her bobbed hair, knee-length dress, long ropes of pearls, dancing the Charleston, so
perfectly portrayed by Joan Crawford in "Our Dancing Daughters," was in the late 1920's.
Mostly our lives revolved around school and its activities. Monday was Girls' High School Club (later called Girl Reserves);
Tuesday was French club, or Spanish club or a capellachoir or orchestra practice; Friday was literary society.
On days we did not have things to do we went to each other's homes and made fudge or danced to the Victorola. One thing
set us apart from today's teen-agers. Nobody worried about getting fat. Perhaps it was because we walked to school--sun, rain,
snow or sleet, we walked.
Or we might walk up to the St. John Confectionery to indulge in a "Home-made." I wonder if this was a local concoction?
It consisted of three dips of vanilla icre cream, smothered with chocolate and marshmallow sauce, the whole sprinkled liberally
with red salted spanish peanuts. It cost 20 cents or a quarter (ice cream cones were a nickel) so we did not treat ourselves
frequently.
On Saturdays in the Fall there were football games.
"Sis, boom, bah! Sis, boom, bah! Northeast High School, Rah! Rah! Rah!" we roared. This was before the day of drum majorettes--the
cheerleaders were boys.
I will never forget one warm fall day my mother and I leaning against each other with supressed laughter on our sleeping
porch as my brother, Whitney and Freddie Hawkins practiced trying out for cheerleader in our garage. Those cheerleader leaps
stood him in good stead, for years later "Freddie" was to become famous as Erick Hawkins, the dancing partner and husband
of Martha Graham, now head of his own dance company.
INTENSE RIVALRY
In the winter there were intercity basketball games in old convention hall. Frank Wheat was the great star of Northeast
in my freshman year. There were only three other high schools in the city then: Central, Manual Training and Westport and
the rivalry was intense. We cheered lustily and the old hall grew murkey with smoke. Our parents often went to these games
and enjoyed them as much as we did.
School spirit was high at Northeast. We meant it with all our hearts when we sang:
Thou, dear Northeast, art the
fairest of all,
Peer of all others, never
fall;
Thy royal banners unfurl to
our view,
Emblems of victory the long
years through,
We come and go and the years
passing by,
Add to thy glory, dear
Northeast High;
May we ere leaving but add
just a gem,
To shine forever in they diadem.
Among the Northeast graudates who have added luster to her name are Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor (1917); Richard Lockridge
(1916), author of mystery stories who wrote a memorable profile for the New Yorker about Miss Ellen Fox, his English teacher;
Charles Luckman (1925), now a noted architect, formerly president of Lever Brothers and Mort Walker (1941), creator of Beetle
Bailey, who name will be best known to those under 50.
The climax of the year for many of us was the "Lit" Contest held in April. There were half a dozen literary societies
whose members competed for gold, silver and bronze medals awarded for the best short stories, essays, poems, orations and
declamations. The contest was turbulent, gay, noisy filled with music balloons, banners and almost unbearable excitement.
The written events were judged in advance but the orations and declamations were given from the stage. Then came the
agony of waiting, the feverish suspense, while the judges deliberated and the societies engaged in a song contest, often all
singing at once. At last came the hush and the anouncement of the winners followed by frenzied screaming as societies counted
their medals.
Do the Alphas, the Debaters, the Delphians and Clionians still flourish, I wonder? Do they still have a literary contest?
Or is that all too old-fashioned and silly for the 1970's. My mother enjoyed the contest as much as we did and went every
year until the last of her six children had graduated from Northeast, in 1940.
The class of 1924 which numbered about 500, held its graduation exercises in Convention Hall. The girls wore pretty summer
dresses, the boys their best suits. I have kept no souvenirs of those long-ago days, half a century ago. Northeast is an old
school now, like its early graduates. But my memories of those halycon years before the bomb and pollution and the population
explosion and Watergate, will always be young and fair."
_________________________
NOTE: Frances' brother Whitney did make Cheerleader.
_________________________
