SCHOOL DAYS, PART 3

In the fall of 1961, I entered the tenth grade.  Yorktown High School was a former elementary school that had been remodeled and enlarged to create a new high school in Arlington.  Prior to that, all of the kids in my area went to Washington Lee High School.  My two older brothers and a sister graduated from Washington Lee.  My sister, Linda, got caught in the over crowding issue at WL and was bussed to another high school in the county and missed out on the family tradition of attending WL  Yorktown opened as a high school in the fall of 1960 with only tenth and eleventh graders.

Attending a new school without a lot of long standing traditions made is easier to get involved. Several of my friends and I started a new girls after school club, Amici Tri-Hi-Y.  We did service projects and had social events.  Our biggest event of the year was planning a formal dance with attendance open to the student body.  The dance was held at the "Broyhill Mansion"  The Broyhills were a wealthy family in the neighborhood and their daughter, Jane, was in our Tri-Hi-Y.  I think that it was her grandparents that owned Broyhill Mansion.  I remember little about the place other than it was large enough to accommodate 200 teens in a ballroom with a dance band.

Living in suburban Washington D.C., I went to school with the sons and daughters of congressmen, senators, and top government officials. My friend, Norene's father, was the under secretary to the Secretary  of Agriculture, Ezra T. Benson.  I also went to high school with the son of President Kennedy's press secretary, Pierre Salinger.  At Yorktown, our biggest celebrity was David Glenn, the son of the astronaut, John Glenn.  John Glenn was the first American in orbit.  On February 20, 1962, our entire school listened to a radio broadcast of his lift off and the splash down.  I had a study hall when the life off took place and worked as a aide in the office.  I was one of the few kids in school who actually saw the lift off on television.

Even with having the dreaded, Miss McBride, for PE and health,  I had a pretty good school year.  I really liked my English teacher who was a dead ringer for the popular actress, Natalie Wood.  Good times, back in those olden days of high school.