Handley Junior High - Cheerleaders 1959-61

 

A Facebook friend loaned me her copy of a 1960 Handley JH yearbook a few weeks ago.  It has provided some additional insight into our Handley classmates' schooling before joining our Meadowbrook contingent at EHHS.

    

Three of these girls, Suzanne Hoffman, Dianah Barton, and Brenda Haire, went on to become EHHS varsity cheerleaders during our years there, 1960-63.  I knew all these girls at EH but didn't know that Cheryl Spain, Peggy Anthony, Sherri Rogers, and Sharon Parks had led cheers at Handley.

Like so many of us learned at EH, the larger high school student population provided more competition for about the same number of recognition opportunities.  So, having been a Junior High star wasn't always a guarantee of continued success at EH.  And each class at EH had only 2 spots available for the girls in that class to lead cheers. 

So, when Suzanne and Dianah won the Sophomore spots at EH, we may not have fully appreciated just how special they were...they had some tough competition.

The boys are Charlie Rigby and Danny Tekstar, both from Meadowbrook JH, neither of whom had ever before been a cheerleader.  All 4 of these youngsters went on to be our Class of 1963 varsity cheerleaders during our Junior and Senior years.  Personality-wise, I recall Charlie and Suzanne as being vivacious extroverts, while Dianah and Danny were more reserved.

And next year, 1960-61,

Adios

Handley Junior High - 1960

This Handley Junior High class of 1960 contributed a number of its members to what would become the EHHS Class of 1963.  I count about 195 which is substantially more than attended HJH the year before, in 8th grade.  Don't know where the influx originated.  However, similar to Meadowbrook, where quite a few students went to Poly after this year, quite a few of these students must have gone to Arlington, since I don't recognize a lot of these kids or their names.

Their Meadowbrook Jr. High counterparts.
  

Adios

Stars Over Meadowbrook Junior High School - Ft. Worth

 I think the Stars Over Meadowbrook spring variety show got its start about 1954 and recall it being a big deal the years I attended the school.  As a new transfer in 1958, I was pretty much overwhelmed by everything at the new school.

Then, a short time after the Christmas vacation, the buzz about the "Stars" show started ramping up in the hallways.  Kids were excited about rounding up their friends to join them in some acts, engaging in after-school practices, and stage preparations.

It was a great time for unbridled socializing and seemed to involve a large component of the student population in one activity or another.  Both the 8th and 9th grades were participants, but I don't think the 7th graders were a part of it...they had to wait until next year.

"You might be interested in knowing, too, that my mother (Lois Terry) and the music teacher (Pat Barr) were instrumental in getting Stars Over Meadowbrook underway. Mama came up w/the title and words to SOM and Pat Barr composed the melody in 1954. When I was in the chorus, in 1962, I couldn't sing that song w/o getting a lump in my throat, knowing that my mother wrote those words." -- Kim Kathleen Terry ('65)

Images included with this article are from the 1958-59-60 shows.  For the most part it was a girls' production ... lots of dancing and stabs at singing and acting, some orchestrals ... and always one boys' act, that as I recall it, was usually a spoof that included some of the football players dressed in drag or some other outrageous garb.  It was great fun for those participating and no doubt provided the model for the EHHS Highland Fling that was quickly established after EH opened in 1959.

 

Those pictured below were mostly to become future EHHS 1961 & 1962 graduates; while the programs shown above and along the left side is made up of 1963 & 1964 EHHS grads.  However, a number of them went to Poly and became graduates of that fine school in the same years noted.

The following pictures were found in a long closed, dusty ISD file by a '65 EH who did not recognize any of them.  Blessedly, the '65 is a Facebook friend of mine and I did recognize a number of them...pretty girls, doncha know--we never forget you, ladies.  And thanks to some still cognizant '61s, we were able to even find the names of those who split away from us and went to Poly.  Enjoy.

Don't recognize anyone here

Don't recognize anyone here

Melany Burton & Dana Gant (both EHHS '61) in this picture; also Julie Moberg.

Event thought to be the closing chorus of the 1958 Stars show.

1955

Younger sisters, Jackie Nantz ('61) and Barbara Isham ('64) were better known to us '63s, since we were in school with them at EHHS where they were quite popular.  The girls pictured most likely went on to Poly and graduated just before EHHS opened.

EHHS Highland Fling

The Highland Fling was a Spring variety show similar to the Meadowbrook "Stars" program and consisted of a series of skits. The main event was the beauty pageant. It was a lot of fun for a lot of kids. The names listed in the program were a number of our more prominent classmates and a number of them went on to live useful lives.

1962

1963

Adios

Honor Roll - Meadowbrook & Eastern Hills HS

While doing some online research into the particulars of the Leonard's Star Award last year I discovered that the topic was a fairly tough one to address. The article linked above may be the only reference to the award currently found online using a Google search. The problem was that the pins and the program occurred a long time ago, a lot of the recipients may no longer be with us, or may simply not be online in this space so they can communicate. However, there was another aspect of those awards that made things difficult...they were given to a relatively small number of students.

I was thinking that the cards shown in this article might well suffer some of the same threat of oblivion...small number of original recipients, of the survivors only a small number of them still have these things available to scan, and perhaps fewer still know how to use a scanner; and fewer still of those know how to post the images to a blog...etc.

Anyway, these cards were given out each 6-weeks with the report cards to those who had earned the requisite grades. A "B" honor roll required an "A" in citizenship and no grade below a "B". The "A" honor roll was tougher...no grade below an "A". There weren't too many "A" honor roll cards given out.

The EHHS cards were a different color each 6-weeks, resulting in a kind of rainbow collection if you got some of them. But the Meadowbroook cards were just 2 colors--a dull gold for "B" honor roll and a bright white printed on glossy card stock for "A". Further, the EHHS cards were all the same with the differentiation being only the letter "A" stamped on their centers. The official sounding words "entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto" was printed prominently below one's name, but

I never quite knew what any of those rights and privileges were. Maybe like so much else in life, they were just words...maybe I should have asked and possibly gotten the pregnant silence in response. That would have been amusing.

Adios

Link Hub – Elementary & Junior High Class Pictures

Meadowbrook Junior High  (1959, 1960, 1961, & 1962 - EH Classes of '62, '63, '64 & '65)

Handley Junior High

Meadowbrook Elementary

Tandy Elementary

Sagamore Hill Elementary

East Handley Elementary

West Handley Elementary

Little Elementary (now part of Arlington ISD)

Consider this page as a hub, similar to an airline hub where you can go directly to your destination in one jump. Due to the random nature with which reference material comes in and the random nature of things coming into my mind, a lot of information is scattered throughout this now massive blog.

Link to Meadowbrook Elementary Collage.

Various organization tools available through the Blogger software are useful, but require a bit more than a casual knowledge in order to get the most out of them. “Labels” will quickly find all articles I have flagged with a given term; the internal Google search will find all articles having the key words or names you select, and the “Archive” will take you to specific articles, but searching it is tedious due to the large number of articles.

Using the “quick links” you used to get to this page is efficient, but as you can see, putting too many of them in can clutter the side bar, ultimately making it much less useful (user friendly?). Using the links above will take you directly to that page and the page is internal to this blog which should result in no dead links—something I don't like in other web pages.

If this works well, I will apply the idea to other multi-page topics located in the blog. Remember, this page only deals with class pictures.

Note to Class of 1962 & 1964: Consider adding your class pictures and other material, if you have them—we knew you pretty well, too.

1960 Meadowbrook Junior High School

About 2/3 of our 1963 Highlander class came from Meadowbrook. Here is a front page of the school paper published in May 1960 as they graduated from Meadowbrook and were bound for EHHS the next Fall. There are a lot of names and parents' names in this scan.

Adios

Meadowbrook Coach Bill Blocker

Anyone who attended Meadowbrook Jr. Hi. in the 1950s and later would recall Coach Blocker, a fixture in the PE department. His cousin was Dan Blocker, Hoss Cartwright in the TV series, Bonanza. Blocker was an expansive figure who had played baseball and/or managed with the 1950 UT National Baseball Championship team. I knew him as the assistant coach of the Meadowbrook football teams where he tagged me with a nickname I was never quite able to shake off. Some of you were still calling me that nickname when we graduated, 5-years after my first encounter with Blocker. Not sure what that says about our relative influences. 

Memories of Blocker from a ('64): CJ64-The assistant coach for everything was Bill Blocker, an emotional, outgoing sort of guy who tended to fat, had squinty eyes, a very upturned nose, and was naturally nicknamed “Piggy” (but never to his face!). Coach Blocker was a UT graduate and had been the manager and part-time player for the UT baseball national champions of 1950. He became the head coach in our 9th grade when Mr. Morrow took over as principal.

He was famous for giving out nicknames to his players. For example, Al Lewis became Alkali, Ted Moberg was Titty-rump, Roby Morris was Robo, I was “Johnny” (but I think because he couldn’t remember my name and probably thought it was Johnny), and so forth. When we were seniors at Eastern Hills, Al and Ted came out as co-captains for the coin toss against Poly High. The referee was none other than Coach Blocker, and he greeted them with “Alkali, Titty-rump, how you boys doin’?” -- much to the consternation of the Poly captains.

I played third-string center for him. In 9th grade I weighed about 120 pounds and was about 5’4”, and I wasn’t very fast or very good. Years later my wife and I went down to Austin to see Texas Tech play Texas. We checked into the old Alamo Hotel before the game and there in the lobby was Coach Blocker. By this time I was 6’2” and weighed about 185. I introduced myself, and very much to my surprise, he beamed and said “Johnny, you played center for me!” I was stunned that he could remember a very non-memorable player, but that is the kind of guy he was. Unfortunately, he died young not too many years after that from a heart attack.

The Target back to school ad below is a pretty good illustration of how I recall Coach Blocker...a kind of drill sergeant in PE whites. He was a conspicuous figure and yes, we climbed that damned rope to the top of the gym ceiling, maybe 30-ft up, a lot. Little, strong guys like Glen Brandon were best at it...for bigger guys it was tougher--more to haul up there..


     

Adios

Handley Junior High - 1959

And for better or worse, here some of us were as 8th Grade Handley Pups in May 1959. Another year and we would be EHHS Sophomores, starting out at the bottom of the pile once more.

These pages were published in the 1959 Handley yearbook. At Handley, grades 7-12 were combined into one school facility so the yearbooks portrayed those 6 classes. Enjoy the memories.

I counted 121 pictures here which would be about 1/3 of the 1963 EH senior class. However, a fair number of these kids went elsewhere to high school and we picked up a larger contingent from Meadowbrook at EH.


Feeders:
East Handley Elementary
West Handley Elementary
Little Elementary (now part of Arlington ISD)
Meadowbrook Elementary
Adios