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     Help locate these missing FHS Classmates 

                               

The Class of 1953

 

   

 

              Barbara Ernestine

              Martha Jean Allen

               James Atkinson

                Rachel Bailey

                  Gloria Bass

              Libby Joyce Beall

          Johnny E. Branson, Jr.

              Peggy Lou Clark 

             Geneve Clements 

            Woodard Crumpler

                  Jean Dively 

                 Jean Frazee

                 Charles Fox

        Elizabeth Rose Gardner

               Shirley Garrett

 

 

               Shirley Ann Helms            

                Roger Hermann

                  Robert Hasty

                Tommy Hawley

               Richard Holcomb

                    Pat Horner

                 Helen Jackson

              Betty Jean Jernigan

           Melba Eugenia Johnson

               Shirley Gay Keiser 

                 Shirley Lowder

          Charles Harold Magarian

                 Sophia Makris

         Russell Bennett Matthews

             G. Stanley McConnell

 

 

 

                     Alice Miller

          Thomas Michael Murphy 

                  Faye Plummer

           Thomas D. Rodgers, Jr.

                 Charles Sanders 

               Patricia Ann Solem

              Gene Oliver Wallace

           James Madison Wallace          

          Laura Hammond Weaver

                   Marilyn Weeks  

             Francis Smith Whitney

              William H. Wilkinson

             Gene Howell Williams

                 John P. Williams 

               Sarah Ann Worrell

 

              If you know where any of our missing classmates can be located, please contact: 
webmaster1@fhsclassmates.com

              

                               

Correspondence from Classmates

 

John Day, Class of 1953 writes:

September 17, 2003

 

An Open Letter to the Class of 1953

Fayetteville Senior High School

 

I am sorry that I will be unable to attend the 50th Reunion in three weeks.  I know you will all have a great time.  Since I can’t be there, I thought I would write a brief letter to let everyone know what has happened to me in the past 50 years, and to extend my best wishes to you all.

This past June my wife and I had a mini-reunion with Patsy McDaniel Donaldson and her husband.  We met for lunch over on the Pacific Coast and tried to get caught up.  Patsy is making periodic trips to North Carolina to visit her mother, and is far more up-to-date on Fayetteville than I am.  We may be the only members of the FHS Class of 1953 that live in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California.  Patsy will share my gossip with you since I know she plans to attend the reunion.

 Fayetteville seems a long way back – 50 years.  I am not sure I have even driven through Fayetteville the past 50 years.  But I have not forgotten.  I was a Bragg Brat, and spent my last three years in high school with you.  There were so many good friends – but I have lost contact with most.  I wonder where they are today.

 I believe Chuck Schlapkohl became an Orthodontist (?) and lived in Boca Raton (?), Florida.  Tom Rogers went to West Point, I believe, but I have had no contact.  What happened to Connie Dyess?  Mary Oates?  Patsy McDaniel, well, she will speak for herself, but we crossed paths in Boston, Mexico City, and now Northern California.

 I actually found my old yearbook recently.  What a kick.  Why do all the women look so great, and all the men are 12-years-old?

I had a number of friends in other high school classes.  George Sibert graduated from West Point and I know he flew helicopters in Viet Nam, but I don’t know where is he today?  Fritz Rall was a year ahead of us – he also went to West Point, served in Viet Nam, and is retired in Florida.  Elizabeth Harrison was living in Seattle area a few years back (she was behind us one year).  Norwood Bryan was in the class ahead of us, but I ran into him when he was at Yale Law School.  I was always intimidated by a lawyer who sells used cars.

 My memory is not as quick as it once was.  I remember our Senior Play (The Man Who Came to Dinner), and even saw it performed on the local California stage a few years ago.  We had a great group of Boy Scouts out at Bragg – putting motor scooters on roofs.  Got my first traffic ticket on the road from Fayetteville to Bragg.  It would have been really bad, except the father of one of the girls in our high school was the Judge (and he was kind to me – I don’t remember her name?).

 For me, I went from Fayetteville High straight to MIT in Boston.  It was a big jump in more ways than distance.  I had an appointment to go to West Point, but when we graduated in 1953, I was 16 and too young to enter West Point.  (I had to wait a year until I was 17 before I could begin West Point.)  So I took off for MIT intending a year “holding pattern”.  My clothes arrived at MIT Freshman year in typical Ft. Bragg military transportation style - they were crated in good North Carolina pine and addressed to the “Military Institute of T”, Cambridge, Massachusetts (so help me).  So my one-year holding pattern at MIT turned into over five year including graduate school (degrees in Physics and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering).  After graduate school the Army finally got me for six months as a Second Lieutenant in the Combat Engineers.

 When I got out of the Army, I married a woman I had met in Boston.  We are still together 44 years later, two daughters, and three grandchildren and having fun growing older together.

 We moved to Northern California in 1959 (after seeing Patsy McDaniel in Mexico when my wife and I were on our honeymoon).  I worked as an engineer in the space program, before going back to the Stanford Graduate School of Business for an MBA.  We live in Silicon Valley in what is our third home located within 5 miles of our first apartment of 44 years ago.

 I have been involved in high technology my professional career, about 17 years in the semiconductor industry and the last 15 in optical communications.  I have started two companies, one successful and one unsuccessful.  Fortunately, the successful one was second.  My last company, a publisher of market reports in high technology, was sold to a New England publishing house, and I retired last year after 24 years in technical publishing.

 In community service things I serve on the Board and am Treasurer for the largest Community Services charity in town.  I have been active in fund raising for a new community pool, am active in the local Episcopal Church, weigh about 20 pounds more than I did when I got out of college, swim about a half-mile many mornings, have my share of aches, but fortunately have been blessed with good health most of my life.

 I would enjoy learning about others from the class.  How many still live in the Fayetteville area?  If you have a roster of who attends the reunion, I would love to see it.  Also perhaps a copy of the class of 1953 membership mailing list – to see who else is around.

Best wishes to all.  If any of you remember me, let me hear from you.

John Day

Email:   johnday3@sbcglobal.net

 

Patsy, Stevie and John 2003

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 Vaya Con Dios
   Last Update:
     September 01, 2014
                                                                         

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