Things change a lot in 50 years. But the bonds people form with each other in high school never change. Members of Oak Park and River Forest High School’s Class of 1955 will renew those bonds this weekend, when they gather at Homecoming for their 50th reunion.
“I just can’t believe 50 years have gone by so quickly,” said Bobbie Raymond Larson, who was Bobbie Wolin in her high school days.
Raymond Larson is just one of many members of the Class of 1955 who have played important roles in this community. She founded the Oak Park Regional Housing Center in 1971 and is generally seen as the person who, perhaps more than any other single person, helped Oak Park integrate in the late 1960s and 1970s and remain an integrated community today. She’s now a board member of the relatively new OPRF Alumni Association.
One person who worked with Raymond Larson in those days was Rich Gloor Sr. of Gloor Realty. Reportedly a “jovial jock” in high school, he was president of the OPRF senior class in 1955 and was voted “most popular boy” according to Tabula, the OPRF yearbook.
Another member of the class, Bill Dring, became a prominent architect and was the project manager for the construction of the Oak Park Village Hall in 1976. David Hanson graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and has served as president of both District 90 and District 200’s school boards.
Tom Ard, who captained the first OPRF wrestling team in school history but also described himself as a nerd in high school, is a local political activist who was instrumental in the founding of the Village Citizens Alliance, a significant part of the New Leadership Coalition that took control of the Oak Park Village Board last April. Ard taught social sciences at Morton West high school for 30 years.
Two members of the class, both women, were elected state legislators. Judy Casperson, now Casperson Kany, served for eight years as a state representative and 10 more as a state senator in Maine. Friend and classmate Barbara Brown Pressly served four years each as a state representative and state senator in New Hampshire. Both are Democrats (though not when they were at OPRF).
To a person, the members of the Class of 1955 interviewed for this story say the rigorous education, excellent fine arts programs, multitude of sports, clubs and activities they experienced at OPRF laid an excellent foundation for their future accomplishments.
“The school imprints you for the rest of your life,” said Paul Stenstrom, who was vice president of the senior class and is now a Baptist minister in Winchendon, Mass.
Those were the days
Class members look back fondly on high school, recalling it as a time of innocence.
“I loved high school,” said Raymond Larson, who had been a child actress on radio and in the early days of live television before entering OPRF at the age of 12. “I loved the school part of it. I loved the academics. Every course I took was wonderful. I really consider that all the things I do today are things that I learned at the high school.”
Class members recall wonderful teachers, demanding academics and tough
grading. Many say that OPRF had a college or large prep school atmosphere.
Gloor, describing himself as a B student, recalls memorizing and reciting portions of Shakespeare and Beowulf with English teacher Knowles Cooke.
“He made it come alive,” said Gloor 50 years later.
Latin teacher Farrand Baker is another of many faculty members students recall as brilliant teachers and scholars. “Many of the teachers were just phenomenal,” said David Milne, who was voted the class wit and now runs his own business in California after a career with Western Electric and Lucent.
In high school, Raymond Larson won the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow award, something that amused and chagrined her friends to no end. They knew she hadn’t taken home-ec in high school and that she had no intention of becoming a homemaker.
Students were exposed to things they might not hear at home, like classical music and opera. There were high expectations for everyone. Values of service, honor and integrity were stressed. A large majority of the class went on to college.
Some felt that college was almost a letdown after OPRF. Casperson Kany went to the University of Michigan. “My freshman year there was really a repeat of my senior year at OPRF,” she noted.
The music and theatrical programs were top notch. The school had its own symphony orchestra where Tom Waller, now a paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institution, was concertmaster his senior year. That’s where he met his wife of 46 years, Carolyn Nalbach, a retired immigration and asylum lawyer, who played the clarinet. They dated only occasionally in high school. Their romance didn’t really blossom until they met again one summer while they were college students.
Not so good old days
Although high school has a timeless quality to it, many things were very different at OPRF 50 years ago. The school was not nearly as diverse as it is today. There was only one African American student, freshman Percy Julian Jr. Most students were Protestant though with a sprinkling of Jews and Catholics thrown in. Male teachers always wore suits, often three piece suits.
In 1955, Oak Park and River Forest were both overwhelmingly Republican towns. Students were mostly uninterested in politics during the quiet Eisenhower years. Raymond Larson remembers that she and Karin Dreiske were the only students in their class to wear Adlai buttons, for 1952 Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson.
“To be open about being a Democrat was not real popular,” explained Raymond Larson.
“I never met a Democrat until I was in college,” echoed Janet Barton Dring, only half joking. Barton Dring married classmate Dring, although they didn’t date each other in high school. In fact, she dated Dring’s then best friend David Albertson.
In 1954-55 all the cheerleaders were boys. Girls were added to the cheerleading squad the following year.
“We were all enthusiasm and no gymnastics,” remembered Milne, who was senior class cheerleader. In 1955 most high schools had switched to female cheerleaders, but male cheerleaders were considered classier and more dignified by some at OPRF.
The football team had a good year beating New Trier and Evanston, but losing to Morton for the first time in 27 years was a big disappointment. The Huskies finished 5 and 3. In 1955 most football helmets lacked face masks and Gloor, who was the pulling guard and middle linebacker, got his nose broken in the 34-20 win over New Trier. He played the next game anyway, but got a bar for his helmet.
OPRF was one of only a handful of schools in Illinois to play soccer. Dring was the captain and led the team with 10 goals. The team’s coach, John Wood, had been the coach of the 1952 United States Olympic soccer team.
Interscholastic sports were overwhelmingly for boys, even though there was an active girls athletic program. Girls’ sports were mostly intramural, except for a few “postal” tournaments. The swim team competed by swimming events and then mailing in their times, which were compared with times from other teams around the state. Archery also had a postal tournament and sophomore Jean Albright had the best score in the state. The 1955 Tabula does report that the girls tennis team had four matches with other schools.
One member of that tennis team, Janet Klecka”now known as Lyn Tietz”fulfilled her athletic potential long after high school. In 1998, she won the junior college Division III national singles tennis championship playing for the College of Dupage against women less than a third her age (and was awarded the Arthur Ashe Jr. Collegiate award). And just last weekend, she won the age 65-75 United States Tennis Association woman’s singles hard court national title, and finished third in doubles.
Did it seem strange at the time that boys could competed but most girls couldn’t? “That’s just the way it was,” said Barton Dring. “You didn’t question things.”
Archery was part of regular “posture classes” for girls.
Most activities were segregated by gender. There were two boys debating societies, and separate debating societies for girls. One debate topic: Should Red China be invited to join the U.N.? There was a girls camera club and a separate boys camera club.
Activities were an important part of high school life. “Back then activities were everything,” said Milne. There was an emphasis on being what was called a “well-rounded individual.”
Brown Pressly served as senior class secretary. It was assumed that secretary was the only class office a girl could aspire to, she remembered. But holding the office taught her a valuable lesson”she vowed to never be relegated to taking the minutes of meetings again. And she never was.
Law and order
In 1955 the academic building and the field house were separated by Ontario Street and an athletic field. Underground tunnels connected the two buildings and in bad weather students would scurry through the damp tunnels for gym class. Older students would take advantage of gullible freshmen by selling them tunnel passes that, of course, were not necessary.
But discipline problems were few and far between. Although there were many rules, most were enforced by student groups.
The Smoking Council”junior and senior boys, mostly jocks”met every Friday in the third period to try offenders accused of violating the smoking rules. Smoking was not allowed on campus. Few students smoked and not many drank.
Driving to school was prohibited and the Safety Council checked license plates looking for offenders. The Hall Committee watched for students running in the halls, and tried offenders.
“We didn’t think of it as strict,” said Raymond Larson. “That’s the way it was. Those were the rules.”
And it you violated the rules you would get an 8:05. That meant you had to report to your home room at 8:05 a.m. and do your time for 15 minutes before the school day officially began at 8:20 a.m.
Raymond Larson only received one 8:05 in four years, for talking in study hall.
Students dressed conservatively and there was a strict dress code, especially for girls. No one dreamed of wearing shorts or T-shirts to school. Boys usually wore button-down shirts, sweaters in the cooler months and wash pants while girls wore skirts, usually with sweaters (preferably cashmere) or conservative blouses. Girls were not allowed to wear pants. Pageboys and flips were popular hair styles for girls.
Nothing revealing, sheer or risqué could be worn to school. Girls were sent home if the authorities found their attire too revealing. The news raced through school when a girl was sent home for wearing a red sweater that was too tight. No one, not even girls, wore earrings.
“Having pierced ears would be considered to be like a gypsy,” said Raymond Larson.
The social scene
For the Class of 1955, dancing was a big part of the social scene. Dring remembered being taught to waltz, fox-trot, and jitterbug by Jesse Pocock at the Oak Park Club. In the fall there was the football dance and in the spring the junior prom, both with live bands. Dances were usually held at the Oak Park Club or the 19th Century Club.
Girls enjoyed hosting their friends for tea on the weekends. They would dress up, with hats and gloves, and stand around chatting, sipping tea, eating finger food and feeling sophisticated.
Some dated a lot, most a little, and some not at all. Double dating was very popular.
If a boy on a sports team was going steady with a girl he would give her a little metal football, basketball or baseball and she would wear it on a necklace.
Dates consisted of movies, going out to eat or sometimes going into Chicago to perhaps hear jazz at the Blue Note or folk music at the Gate of Horn.
At parties kids listened to the last gasps of big band music or the hits of the hit parade. Rock ‘n’ roll had not quite emerged.
Like in any high school, there were a variety of social groupings with the jocks holding most leadership positions.
“Kids who lived in River Forest and northwest Oak Park and had a lot of money were running the show,” said Raymond Larson.
But everyone got along. “You could move with different people and nobody would ostracize you,” said Barton Dring.
“It was a very friendly class,” added Milne. “Everybody knew everybody.”
“We were all honorary WASPs,” joked Raymond Larson. “There was an elite quality to it and that was good and bad.”
For many, the bonds formed in high school remain strong today. In fact three members of the class, Casperson Kany, Jean Metcalf Wortman and Anne Caldwell Movalson all live in the same retirement community in Arizona and get together often.
Many look back on the 1950s as quiet and boring. but members of the Class of 1955 say they grew up in a time of safety and security and recall it fondly.
“There is a difference in our generation,” said Raymond Larson. “Maybe we were the last innocent generation: before drugs, before Vietnam.”