Class of 1961 Celebrates 50th Reunion

SECOND CLASS TO GRADUATE FROM EGHS

This year’s Alumni Reunion Weekend will mark the 50th anniversary of the East Greene Class of 1961, which will be honored at the annual alumni banquet on Saturday, May 28, at the high school gymnasium in Grand Junction.

Thirty-members strong, the East Greene Class of 1961 was just the second to graduate from the newly merged district that was formed the summer after their sophomore years at Grand Junction and Dana high schools, respectively.

Class members who donned their caps and gowns that year May for commencement exercises were Bob Baxter, Carol Blanshan, Jeanette Briggs, Donna Cody, Sandra Crouch, Diane Finger, Jolene Fogarty, Pat Frantz, Bill Glawe, Claudette Hamilton, Mike Heath, Priscilla Herrick, Sandra James, Joyce Kersey, Harry “Kip” Lepke Jr., Dick McComb, Charles Metzger, Mary Pedersen, John Reineman, Francis Riehl, Jerry Schrum, Judy Scott, Faye Sims, Pam Slock, Ruth Teagarden, Joan Thompson, Steve Tiffany, Gary Weaver, Roger Wessling and Meredith Young.

This particular class actually came from four different elementary/junior high schools over the course of their high school careers. Their freshman year at GJHS, 1957-58, brought together the 8th graders of 1956-57 from Grand Junction Consolidated School with the 1957 eighth graduates from St. Mary’s Academy in Grand Junction and the Beaver elementary school.

Dana students went from eighth grade right into high school in Dana their freshman and sophomore years, 1957-58 and 1958-59, but joined the Grand Junction high school students as the junior class in the new East Greene High School in the fall of 1959. The senior class that year, 1959-60, became the first graduating class of East Greene.

The East Greene Class of 1961 helped usher in the new decade with new school colors, mascot, fight song and all new uniforms for basketball, band and choir. It was a “green-and-white” universe as the purple of Dana and the blue of Grand Junction high schools soon faded into the past of the bygone 1950s.

It was an era of the bold new architecture, the Cold War, space exploration and an exciting new president and a glamorous First Lady, as President John F. Kennedy began campaigning for the presidency in the spring of the Class of ‘61’s junior year and was elected in the fall of their senior year.

That year will also be noted by the remarkable run of the East Greene Hawkettes on the basketball court and their senior leader, forward Pam Slock, and coach, Otis Roby. Expectations were high for the Hawkettes that year as they were coming off a successful 1959-60 campaign which saw them win the Greene County Tournament, tie for the championship of the Little Central Conference, and win the sectional tournament and advance to the districts.

Their co-champions in the Little Central—Grand Community of Boxholm—had made it to the state tournament the previous year and that team featured one of the top guards in the state, Rita Peterson. The same year, 1960, saw the Churdan Rockets boys basketball team advance to the State Class B tournament—the last year of the A-B state tourneys until resumption in 1967.

With the success of two Little Central teams in 1960, anticipation was high for the 1961 season. All eyes were on the East Greene girls team as they returned five of six starters from 1959-60, including Slock, who scored at 39.2 points per game in leading EG to a 17-3 mark as a junior, and three other senior veterans—Faye Sims in the forward court, Jolene Fogarty in the guard court, and reserve guard Ruth Teagarden. The only starter lost from 1960 was guard Lana Miller, who was named first-team all-conference. The other veterans back were juniors Sharon Frantz in the forward court and Helen Holz in the guard court.

Clearly the Hawkettes would be a force to reckon with as Slock had been named third team all-state by the Iowa Daily Press Association (IDPA) and fifth team all-state by the Des Moines Register as a junior.

The Hawkettes lived up to their billing and rolled through the season, winning the Little Central Conference with a perfect 10-0 mark and finishing the regular season unbeaten at 17-0. Slock led the state in scoring throughout the season with a 52.6 average and she broke many scoring records along the way, topped by a 78-point performance against arch rival Rippey.

She set and then re-set school scoring records throughout her high school career. She scored 78 in a game against Rippey late in the season, breaking her own school record of 65 points set on Jan. 6, 1961, against Churdan, an 85-67 win for the Hawkettes, and one of the last victories over Churdan or Paton-Churdan for nearly 10 years.

Slock had set the bar high for the school scoring record as a junior when she poured in 61 points against Paton in a sectional tournament game on the Hawkettes’ home court in Grand Junction.

East Greene was ranked in the Top 10 of all Iowa girls high school teams in 1960-61 and just missed a trip to the state tournament, losing by two points to No. 3 Cedar Valley—a powerhouse in the 1950s and early 60s in this part of the state—in the district final.

Slock, however, did win the sectional and district free throw championship and advanced on to state level where she won the State Free Throw Championship. She was named first team all-state at the end of the season by both the Des Moines Register and IDPA.

The boys basketball team had a solid season, finishing 9-10 and advancing to the sectional finals. EG finished 4-6 in the Little Central Conference and bowed in the first round of the county tourney with a loss to Churdan.

The cheerleaders that season were seniors Joan Thompson, Joyce Kersey and Meredith Young; and juniors Judy Adamson and Leita Hillman.

East Greene had another fine season in baseball as the team was 8-1 in the fall with the only loss coming to Jewell. EG ended the fall season with a 4-0 record in the Little Conference with 6 games to be played in the spring.

Class members were accorded a number of honors along their GJ and EG high school way, including having a candidate elected Homecoming Queen each of their sophomore, junior and senior years—Slock in 1959, Teagarden in 1960 and Thompson in 1961.

Slock and Donna Cody were senior members of the National Honor Society in1961 along with Holz, selected as a junior, and Judy Hamilton, a sophomore. Sims and Thompson were co-editors of the annual staff, now dubbed the Hawkeye, and Fogarty and Pat Frantz were co-editors of the newly renamed school paper, The Gazette, which continued as a weekly page in the Globe-Free Press from its forerunner, The Scoop of Grand Junction High School.

The “Globe” as is was known locally was the weekly Grand Junction paper with circulation in all the surrounding towns. It had pages set aside for The Rippey News and The Paton Portrait which featured news particular to those towns. Each page also had space that year for their own school news from the Rippey and Paton schools.

The successful music program of the Grand Junction schools continued unabated at East Greene under vocal music teacher Carson Griffith and instrumental music teacher Charles Radke, both young members of the former GJHS faculty. Four vocal students were selected to the All-State Chorus—Judy Thompson, Bob Morlan, John Goodrich and Teagarden. Janet Henderson, a junior, was selected to the All-State Band.

The boys glee had 29 members and accompanist Sarah Minium and the girls glee had 42 members. The mixed chorus was 70-voices strong (check this).

The East Greene band was resplendent in is new Kelley green uniforms with featured a white chord and tassels across the uniform’s front for concert band and a buttoned-on white shields with the green EG Hawk logo for marching band. The twirlers were also decked out in new duds—white satin uniforms and green accents.

The cheerleaders were probably the best representation for the new district that year as the new uniforms unveiled the previous season featured Kelly green sweaters with white pleated skirts. Across each sweater was a megaphone with the letters E-G-C-S-D, so fans far and wide would know that these girls were proudly leading the cheers of our of new East Greene Community School District!

This was at the height of the era where community school districts were being created all over the state so the lineup of teams, nicknames and colors was new from north to south and east to west. East Greene was a new name in central Iowa as were Central Webster, Prairie View, Grand, United, YJB, South Hamilton, Northeast Hamilton, Northwest Webster and Central Dallas, along with schools formed a few years earlier, like Cedar Valley, and newly merged community school districts that implemented the use of the hyphenating the town/school district names to re-christen themselves, as did Panora-Linden and Woodward-Granger.

These were prevalent throughout the state from Bridgewater-Fontanelle and Carson-Macedonia in the south to Bondurant-Farrar in the center and Havelock-Plover and Harris-Lake Park in the north. Newly created names that took a little from one and a little from another were prevalent too, such as Delwood of Elwood (Delmar and Elwood) in eastern Iowa and Dexfield of Redfield (Dexter and Redfield) in central Iowa.

Two years later, Rippey would also become part of East Greene, and two years beyond that, Paton officially joined with Churdan to form another hyphenated district, Paton-Churdan. The state of Iowa had decreed that by July 1, 1966, every school district had to include a high school, so sadly, our friends from Beaver officially became part of the Ogden Community School District, ending a three-year arrangement where three towns comprised East Greene—GJ, Dana and Beaver—and then a four-town arrangement when Rippey was added to the mix in 1962-63 and 1963-64, but by then Beaver students had already begun shifting to Ogden.

Beaver students had been attending high school at the Grand Junction since Beaver High School was closed at the end of World War II.

East Greene continued a great rivalry with Rippey those first of East Greene and the Class of 1961 was right in the middle of that three-year EG vs. Rippey run. Churdan was always a fierce rival of Grand Junction and that continued with East Greene. The Churdan games were always a high point on the sports calendar—especially in basketball.