Class of 1975 Senior Year
Looks like we are closing in on the finishing line, as the class of 1975 entered their last year of high school. It had been a long journey since entering school in 1963-64 to now. We were all excited. Graduating meant a rite of passage, freedom to make your own choices, some would choose college, some would go into the workforce and many like myself were really unsure of what we wanted to do. 1974 was the year that Patricia Hurst was kidnapped, President Nixon resigned. We had to watch it on TV, “because it was history being made” is what my parents said. At my house, any time the President came on TV we had to watch it. It didn’t matter if he was Democrat or Republican, he was the President, and so we watched. Then we had President Gerald Ford and, we all followed Susan Ford, because she was our age. There were articles in Seventeen magazines that talked about taking a year off before entering college. Some took the year off. In my case it was six months off, and it did make me more focused on my goals.
Summer of 1974
The summer of 1974 we got some information in the mail about the West Virginia Schools for the Blind and Deaf in Romney West Virginia. Romney is close to Cumberland Maryland. Six hours of driving from Beckley. I decided that I wanted to find out more about this school. I was a senior in high school and I needed skills such as typing and I wanted to find out other options for me. I couldn’t take typing at Woodrow, because of some of the teachers there. They kept saying things like I couldn’t see well enough to do it. My mom had taught us everything about keeping house, cooking, and laundry. At that point, I resented anyone telling me I couldn’t do something. So, Sharon and I packed up to head for Romney for a month.
The first few days were enjoyable, they had a radio station and I found out that I could do radio, I could get my HAM radio license if I wanted. I did take typing there as well as public speaking and photography. Blind people type, you are not supposed to look at the keys anyway. We were there at school, and we knew the schedule of my mom and dad and we tried to call home an never got an answer and I got very worried and homesick. When we finally got in touch with Mom, she told us that Dad had been in a mining accident and he had lost two fingers. I lost it, I didn’t care what had to be done, I wanted to be home. I couldn’t enjoy my time there with the others girls my age. I cried a lot. I wasn’t ready to leave home and I didn’t like all of the rules that they had. I was sixteen not six or twelve ad I was a pretty responsible teenager, but I felt smothered by all of the rules. They said that we could come back for the fall school year if we wanted. Sharon had decided to go to school there in the fall. I wanted to graduate from Woodrow, not from a blind school. They said I could come there after I graduated if I wanted to gain some living skills.
Senior Year
My first day of my senior year was a nightmare. I really don’t know why, maybe it was because I missed my sister who the week before left and went to Romney for her eight grade year of school. I had only signed up for four classes; I had Psychology, with Miss Zorio, English, with Mrs. Ann Dye, Chorus with Mr. Holmes, and public speaking, with Mr. Gravely. It didn’t dawn on me that I would have to get someone to pick me up from school at 12:15 until that first day. I hadn’t made arrangements, so after English with Mrs. Ann Dye, I had lunch, and that is when I met Amanda Carter. We had English together and she asked me where her next class was. Since I didn’t have anything else to do I showed her where it was and we talked. She said her dad was transferred here to build what is now the Mine Health and Safety Academy. She was from Bristol Tennessee. The rest of the day I goofed around and hung out at the library. Then I went to the guidance office and attempted to make a schedule out in case nobody could pick me up from school.
The styles that year had changed, the skirts were longer. A lot of the style came from a movie “The Great Gatsby” which was about F. Scott Fitzgerald. I had a lot of jeans, because that’s what we got when we went to Romney. All my skirts were too short to wear, so I wore pants most of the time that year. My dad wasn’t back at work yet, so he picked me up from school at 12:15 each day. On some of the Fridays we drove to Romney to get Sharon so we could haave a weekend with all of us at home and we would take her back on Sunday. I was looking forward to Christmas, because I missed Sharon. While she was gone, I had started being about to get “Talking Books” which were audio books. I “read” constantly. You could listen to a book, while doing housework, so I read everything from Malcolm X, H. Rap Brown, to Jacqueline Susan’s “Once is not enough”.
I didn’t go to dances or anything like that, my parents were a little over protective. There were concerts at West Virginia State, that I would hear about, I wanted to go, but my folks figured that someone would try to get me drunk or something, so I wasn’t allowed to go. When Christmas came, we went to get Sharon on December 13; we had put up a huge Christmas tree that year. We had got some Christmas presents, which was the year that Hobby Holly was big. It was a special Christmas at our house that year; One that I will never forget. It was also to be my grandfather JL Staples last Christmas with us. On December 22, and 23, my grandparents came to visit and stayed until after midnight, just talking and being with us. I went back to school on January 2nd. Sharon was to be back on Monday January 5th.
On January 2nd, we got a phone call that they were taking grandpa to the hospital, he had had a heart attack. We waited for a while and we went to my grandparents’ house. My grandma was just coming home and, we heard what happened. My dad had just returned back to work, there was some discussion about sending someone to get him. It was close to midnight, we went home, my dad passed by their house and saw all of the lights on and knew something was wrong. He went to the hospital. He told us later that he knew that grandpa wasn’t going to make it, because, he had been able to call his name and get a response, this time he didn’t get a response. I went to school, and when my mom picked me up before we got out of the circular drive at Woodrow, she told me that my grandpa didn’t make it. I felt as if I was living a nightmare. I was 16, and this was my first dealing with death where I understood what was going on. This affected my studies and everything.
After that Sharon didn’t go back to Romney, she enrolled in school here. Things got so shook up, my mom left for a week. I really don’t know why, I guess it got to be too much dealing with things. My dad wanted to pay for the funeral, he had just gone back to work and there wasn’t much money to spare. With graduation coming I hadn’t even taken my ACT test yet. Back then it only cost five dollars or something like that. Now I think it cost around fifty or seventy five dollars. You can take it as much as you can afford to in order to get the score that you need. Sharon said that she paid for three or four for her kids. I didn’t know this. I finally took it, but didn’t score well. So on June 6, 1975 I graduated from high school. I wore an orange dress under my white cap and gown. My uncle Clarence, kept an account at Rahall’s, and he told me to go buy a dress there and charge it to his account. I had no idea what I was going to do. I really wanted to do radio. That was it. I wasn’t a bad student, I was average, I was ranked in the middle of my class, and there were 527 of us who graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. Some achieved a lot of success and other just survived.
My senior year was very traumatic to say the least. The next day after graduation, I went to the cemetery to see my grandpa and I remember looking up at the crypt with his name on it and saying “Grandpa I made it”. I wasn’t sure what was next. I had to decide. What I did was to take some time off from school. It was the smartest thing I could have done. There were things I wanted to achieve in high school, but I was too shy to do them. Maybe I could achieve them later, so I thought.
Summer of 1974
The summer of 1974 we got some information in the mail about the West Virginia Schools for the Blind and Deaf in Romney West Virginia. Romney is close to Cumberland Maryland. Six hours of driving from Beckley. I decided that I wanted to find out more about this school. I was a senior in high school and I needed skills such as typing and I wanted to find out other options for me. I couldn’t take typing at Woodrow, because of some of the teachers there. They kept saying things like I couldn’t see well enough to do it. My mom had taught us everything about keeping house, cooking, and laundry. At that point, I resented anyone telling me I couldn’t do something. So, Sharon and I packed up to head for Romney for a month.
The first few days were enjoyable, they had a radio station and I found out that I could do radio, I could get my HAM radio license if I wanted. I did take typing there as well as public speaking and photography. Blind people type, you are not supposed to look at the keys anyway. We were there at school, and we knew the schedule of my mom and dad and we tried to call home an never got an answer and I got very worried and homesick. When we finally got in touch with Mom, she told us that Dad had been in a mining accident and he had lost two fingers. I lost it, I didn’t care what had to be done, I wanted to be home. I couldn’t enjoy my time there with the others girls my age. I cried a lot. I wasn’t ready to leave home and I didn’t like all of the rules that they had. I was sixteen not six or twelve ad I was a pretty responsible teenager, but I felt smothered by all of the rules. They said that we could come back for the fall school year if we wanted. Sharon had decided to go to school there in the fall. I wanted to graduate from Woodrow, not from a blind school. They said I could come there after I graduated if I wanted to gain some living skills.
Senior Year
My first day of my senior year was a nightmare. I really don’t know why, maybe it was because I missed my sister who the week before left and went to Romney for her eight grade year of school. I had only signed up for four classes; I had Psychology, with Miss Zorio, English, with Mrs. Ann Dye, Chorus with Mr. Holmes, and public speaking, with Mr. Gravely. It didn’t dawn on me that I would have to get someone to pick me up from school at 12:15 until that first day. I hadn’t made arrangements, so after English with Mrs. Ann Dye, I had lunch, and that is when I met Amanda Carter. We had English together and she asked me where her next class was. Since I didn’t have anything else to do I showed her where it was and we talked. She said her dad was transferred here to build what is now the Mine Health and Safety Academy. She was from Bristol Tennessee. The rest of the day I goofed around and hung out at the library. Then I went to the guidance office and attempted to make a schedule out in case nobody could pick me up from school.
The styles that year had changed, the skirts were longer. A lot of the style came from a movie “The Great Gatsby” which was about F. Scott Fitzgerald. I had a lot of jeans, because that’s what we got when we went to Romney. All my skirts were too short to wear, so I wore pants most of the time that year. My dad wasn’t back at work yet, so he picked me up from school at 12:15 each day. On some of the Fridays we drove to Romney to get Sharon so we could haave a weekend with all of us at home and we would take her back on Sunday. I was looking forward to Christmas, because I missed Sharon. While she was gone, I had started being about to get “Talking Books” which were audio books. I “read” constantly. You could listen to a book, while doing housework, so I read everything from Malcolm X, H. Rap Brown, to Jacqueline Susan’s “Once is not enough”.
I didn’t go to dances or anything like that, my parents were a little over protective. There were concerts at West Virginia State, that I would hear about, I wanted to go, but my folks figured that someone would try to get me drunk or something, so I wasn’t allowed to go. When Christmas came, we went to get Sharon on December 13; we had put up a huge Christmas tree that year. We had got some Christmas presents, which was the year that Hobby Holly was big. It was a special Christmas at our house that year; One that I will never forget. It was also to be my grandfather JL Staples last Christmas with us. On December 22, and 23, my grandparents came to visit and stayed until after midnight, just talking and being with us. I went back to school on January 2nd. Sharon was to be back on Monday January 5th.
On January 2nd, we got a phone call that they were taking grandpa to the hospital, he had had a heart attack. We waited for a while and we went to my grandparents’ house. My grandma was just coming home and, we heard what happened. My dad had just returned back to work, there was some discussion about sending someone to get him. It was close to midnight, we went home, my dad passed by their house and saw all of the lights on and knew something was wrong. He went to the hospital. He told us later that he knew that grandpa wasn’t going to make it, because, he had been able to call his name and get a response, this time he didn’t get a response. I went to school, and when my mom picked me up before we got out of the circular drive at Woodrow, she told me that my grandpa didn’t make it. I felt as if I was living a nightmare. I was 16, and this was my first dealing with death where I understood what was going on. This affected my studies and everything.
After that Sharon didn’t go back to Romney, she enrolled in school here. Things got so shook up, my mom left for a week. I really don’t know why, I guess it got to be too much dealing with things. My dad wanted to pay for the funeral, he had just gone back to work and there wasn’t much money to spare. With graduation coming I hadn’t even taken my ACT test yet. Back then it only cost five dollars or something like that. Now I think it cost around fifty or seventy five dollars. You can take it as much as you can afford to in order to get the score that you need. Sharon said that she paid for three or four for her kids. I didn’t know this. I finally took it, but didn’t score well. So on June 6, 1975 I graduated from high school. I wore an orange dress under my white cap and gown. My uncle Clarence, kept an account at Rahall’s, and he told me to go buy a dress there and charge it to his account. I had no idea what I was going to do. I really wanted to do radio. That was it. I wasn’t a bad student, I was average, I was ranked in the middle of my class, and there were 527 of us who graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. Some achieved a lot of success and other just survived.
My senior year was very traumatic to say the least. The next day after graduation, I went to the cemetery to see my grandpa and I remember looking up at the crypt with his name on it and saying “Grandpa I made it”. I wasn’t sure what was next. I had to decide. What I did was to take some time off from school. It was the smartest thing I could have done. There were things I wanted to achieve in high school, but I was too shy to do them. Maybe I could achieve them later, so I thought.
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