Official website for the West High School
Class of 1957 Reunion Committee
Class of 1957 Reunion Committee
Hello. I'm Don Whittemore, Class of 1957.
I had a great time at the party. I loved seeing everybody and hearing the stories, and I thought the Class Directory was a triumph. In addition to addresses to update my address mind, it has current pictures (except for Laree S., I think) so that I can update my memory bank to the 21st century, too.
I also had an idea that I wanted to ask you about for the next event. What I would like to be able to put together with everyone in the class who thinks it's something they'd like to be part of is what I might term An Oral History of the Class of 1957. It would be what those who want to see something like this want it to be, of course, because its content would be dependent on the people who would contribute to it. It would give everyone who wanted to participate a chance to talk about what their time at West High was like, the big events (such as the plays, the musical events, the sports events, the Proms, and stuff like that), the classes or the teachers they particularly remember, clubs and activities they participated in or enjoyed or remember with fondness.
The way I propose to do it is to conduct telephone interviews with everyone who wants to talk about life at West High and in Rockford in the middle of the 1950s. We were the last high school class to graduate before Sputnik went up and changed the focus of the whole country. The Korean War ended the year before we started, the Berlin Wall and Vietnam were a few years in the future. It was the Fifties and it had its own stories.
People's stories tend to get lost because nobody writes them down and so all the feelings and all the experiences disappear. I think that if enough people in the class would like to do this, we might even be able to find a publisher and make it into a commercial book. That might be a long shot, but we could certainly put together a book on the order of this year's directory.
What interests me most, I think, is our collective state of mind, you might say, during the last year of high school. That would be the main focus, I think, and along with that would be some background, like where everybody came from, their previous schools, what it was like to come to West High the first day, what sort of experiences we all had. I enrolled in ROTC and on the first day in uniform it turned out that I had reversed the patches so that you might say I really stood out in the group. I imagine everybody has some story about their first days and weeks at West.
If you think this is an interesting idea, let me know and we can discuss how to do it. So far as the interviews are concerned, I can handle all that. I would record the conversation and then transcribe the text. I have done a lot of transcribing so it's not difficult for me and I have digital resources that would allow me to record from the telephone and then download the MP3 file to my computer and transcribe from that.
The point on that is that I can handle all the technical details of getting the stories and the memories on paper. But the main thing I would like to find out is whether you and Rich and the others who are planning the next event think that this is something worth pursuing. I think it would be a great tribute to the whole class to make a record of the way we were half a century ago.
Anyway, that's the general tenor of my idea. It grew out of the enjoyment I got from hearing so many stories at the party and out of a desire that it would be great to have as many personal memories and stories in book form as possible because there isn't enough time to do it at the reunion itself.
I'll be interested to hear what you think of this idea.
I had a great time at the party. I loved seeing everybody and hearing the stories, and I thought the Class Directory was a triumph. In addition to addresses to update my address mind, it has current pictures (except for Laree S., I think) so that I can update my memory bank to the 21st century, too.
I also had an idea that I wanted to ask you about for the next event. What I would like to be able to put together with everyone in the class who thinks it's something they'd like to be part of is what I might term An Oral History of the Class of 1957. It would be what those who want to see something like this want it to be, of course, because its content would be dependent on the people who would contribute to it. It would give everyone who wanted to participate a chance to talk about what their time at West High was like, the big events (such as the plays, the musical events, the sports events, the Proms, and stuff like that), the classes or the teachers they particularly remember, clubs and activities they participated in or enjoyed or remember with fondness.
The way I propose to do it is to conduct telephone interviews with everyone who wants to talk about life at West High and in Rockford in the middle of the 1950s. We were the last high school class to graduate before Sputnik went up and changed the focus of the whole country. The Korean War ended the year before we started, the Berlin Wall and Vietnam were a few years in the future. It was the Fifties and it had its own stories.
People's stories tend to get lost because nobody writes them down and so all the feelings and all the experiences disappear. I think that if enough people in the class would like to do this, we might even be able to find a publisher and make it into a commercial book. That might be a long shot, but we could certainly put together a book on the order of this year's directory.
What interests me most, I think, is our collective state of mind, you might say, during the last year of high school. That would be the main focus, I think, and along with that would be some background, like where everybody came from, their previous schools, what it was like to come to West High the first day, what sort of experiences we all had. I enrolled in ROTC and on the first day in uniform it turned out that I had reversed the patches so that you might say I really stood out in the group. I imagine everybody has some story about their first days and weeks at West.
If you think this is an interesting idea, let me know and we can discuss how to do it. So far as the interviews are concerned, I can handle all that. I would record the conversation and then transcribe the text. I have done a lot of transcribing so it's not difficult for me and I have digital resources that would allow me to record from the telephone and then download the MP3 file to my computer and transcribe from that.
The point on that is that I can handle all the technical details of getting the stories and the memories on paper. But the main thing I would like to find out is whether you and Rich and the others who are planning the next event think that this is something worth pursuing. I think it would be a great tribute to the whole class to make a record of the way we were half a century ago.
Anyway, that's the general tenor of my idea. It grew out of the enjoyment I got from hearing so many stories at the party and out of a desire that it would be great to have as many personal memories and stories in book form as possible because there isn't enough time to do it at the reunion itself.
I'll be interested to hear what you think of this idea.
Ready for an Oral History Project?
TIP: Click on Don's picture to let him know by email what you think of the idea.