The First Three Years: Page, America, And Society

By Bob Bettis, Class of 1961

So it goes.

--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969

We were born smack in the middle of World War II, the bloodiest, most destructive conflict in history. By the time it ended in 1945, with detonation of two atomic bombs over Japan, 56 million civilians and military personnel around the globe had perished.

The Allies’ victory over the Axis powers ensured that democracy, not fascism, would prevail in America. Grade schools, high schools, and colleges, including those in North Carolina, soon embarked upon rapid growth, fueled by an expanding economy, returning war veterans, and the first surging wave of toddlers who became known as Baby Boomers.

Society was in change as we finished up junior high school in the spring of 1958. The staid conformity and conservatism of the early and mid-1950’s -- captured to an extent in Sloan Wilson’s 1955 novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and in a 1956 movie by the same name starring Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones -- was fading.

In October, 1957 the Soviet Union started the Space Age when it launched into orbit around the earth Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite. That achievement threw Congress and the nation’s educators into a frenzy, prompting massive American investment in education and technology that eventually landed a man on the moon.

Nothing delighted the burgeoning population of teenagers more than the advent of rock ‘n’ roll, a unique, rebellious style of music blending rhythm and blues, gospel, and country and western. The dynamic, high-energy sounds of rock pioneers such as Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Brenda Lee, Neil Sedaka, Connie Francis, the Platters, the Drifters, the Everly Brothers, Paul Anka, Marvin Gaye, Ricky Nelson, Dion and, of course, Elvis blared from radios in car pools hauling us to and from school and from transistor radios at home.

Year One: 1958-1959

Those of us who matriculated at Aycock Elementary School (grades 1-6) and Aycock and Proximity Junior Highs (grades 7-9) had no complaints with the appearance of the sleek, new Page Senior High School awaiting us in September, 1958. A jewel of a facility for grades 10-12 set amidst quiet woods and suburban hills, it was a sharp contrast to the venerable Aycock and, for that matter, to the ancient Greensboro Senior High School on Westover Terrace that opened in 1929.

We were also pleased at Page’s small student body, a tad under 500 the inaugural year, enabling personal attention and a caring attitude among the faculty. Some of us might have wandered in the maze had we been forced to enter Greensboro Senior as sophomores. At Page we quickly got into the spirit of things, participating in extracurricular activities and helping, in a student-wide vote, to select the Pirates nickname and red and white school colors.

Page built a diversified curriculum and strong academic reputation from the start. The school was the first in the history of North Carolina to earn accreditation in the first year of its existence and produced two Morehead Scholars each year between 1959 and 1965.

A great deal of this progress was attributed to Luther R. Medlin, the first principal. Through his leadership, Page in just three years became well known throughout North Carolina. His announcements over the homeroom P.A. system began the day, and between classes you’d often see the oval-faced, bespectacled Medlin scurrying down the hallways en route to yet another meeting. He and Philip J. Weaver, then Greensboro’s superintendent of schools, were icons of a sort in Guilford County.

The emphasis on scholastics meant hard work in class with long hours of homework assignments. How you reacted depended on your aptitude and temperament. You might delight in English and history or, conversely, suffer through Latin, chemistry, and physics--the latter three surely among the most diabolic courses ever created.

A strength of the faculty all three years was exceptional English teachers. During our sophomore, junior, and senior years Olive Betts, Margaret Garrett, Iris Hunsinger, Carol Lucas, Robert Newton, and Carol Joyce Carson introduced us to giants of literature: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Herman Melville, George Eliot, and others.

Year Two: 1959-1960

Our junior year brought new courses and instructors. Their demeanor, whether strict, casual, or give-and-take, always set the classroom tone.

One day Mary Lasher, a fireball history teacher whose reddish-brown hair reflected her tempestuous bent, hurled a verbal question regarding the previous week’s lesson to the class. When none of the students she called on replied with the correct answer (or worse, gave no answer), Mrs. Lasher, pacing in front of the blackboard like a restless cheetah, grabbed a stick of chalk and slammed it to the floor, broken pieces ricocheting around the room. Half the class sat dumfounded, the other half trembling.

The school year was overshadowed somewhat by the Greensboro Sit-Ins of 1960, historic events that rocked downtown Greensboro and became a hallmark of the American civil rights movement. On February 1, 1960 four freshmen from North Carolina A&T, an all-black college in the city, sat down at a segregated lunch counter in the F.W. Woolworth store on South Elm Street. They were refused service.

The next day 24 students participated in a second sit-in protest at the same Woolworth’s store. On February 4, black students were joined by white female students from Woman’s College (now UNC-G) at segregated food counters throughout Greensboro. Within two months there were 54 additional sit-ins around the South in 15 cities in nine states.

Finally, in July, 1960 F.W. Woolworth and other Greensboro stores changed their policies to allow integrated food counters that served people regardless of race. The successful protest did alter local and national custom, but full legal change came later with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Year Three: 1960-1961

Page continued to grow and expand in the third year. A new crop of sophomores, the largest in school history, helped push total student enrollment over 700. We seniors experienced perhaps our most satisfying time, despite angst over writing term papers and taking college board exams.

Several “firsts” became part of the Page tradition:

• Choral instructor Milton Bliss wrote the school anthem, “Page High Forever.”
• An honors geometry course, taught by Will Bennett, was begun as part of a nationwide program.
• Thirteen girls comprised Page’s first homecoming court. Seniors Jean Redding and Beverly Beavers were named Queen and Maid of Honor respectively.
• The varsity basketball team, coached by Les Swanner, went 12-8 for the season and swept cross-town rival Greensboro Senior High in two matchups. After the second game, played at Senior High, stunned Whirlie students filed out of their gym with faces as grim as their future namesake. (Greensboro Senior was officially renamed Greensboro Grimsley on July 1, 1962.)

The year wound down with presentation of the annual Class Day Play, a parody and satirical imitation of teachers and classes written, directed, and performed by seniors. Chris Troxler, Marcia Wechter, Mildred Lee Carr, Don Williams, and I wrote a script for the play, entitled “Into the Stratosphere.” The student body roared with laughter as the scenes unfolded on stage. Alas, certain teachers did not share our sense of humor, and a wild rumor circulated that the five playwrights would be expelled a week before graduation! Mercifully, the rumor was false.

At graduation ceremonies on a warm night in early June, 221 seniors from the Class of 1961 were awarded diplomas--the first class to complete three years at Page.

We had no inkling of the revolution that lay ahead. Before the decade was out national political, judicial, and social upheavals punctured the culture in which we grew up and were educated: the Vietnam war and antiwar rallies; the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.; race riots in Newark, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and the Watts section of Los Angeles; the Free Speech Movement leading to campus demonstrations at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University; experimentation with psychedelic drugs; the Woodstock Music & Arts Festival attracting 300,000 rock fans; and two Supreme Court rulings declaring school-sponsored Bible reading and prayers unconstitutional. The turbulent 60s had turned the country upside down.

And so it goes.

--Bob Bettis, Class of 1961

Written November, 2007. Originally published for The Page Newsletter, Page Alumni and Friends Association.