What Happens To Seniors After Graduation? (1956)

[genealogynut]

Howard Courant-Citizen
March 29, 1956

The time is coming soon when 26 Seniors will be graduated from Howard high school.  No doubt they will seem to suddenly disappear and some we won't hear from often and others will be around, now and then.  We often wonder what ever happened to so and so, where is he or she is working, or are they in school, or are they married and settled for life?

We have made a survey of the graduating class of 1955 and we find them in a variety of occupations or fields of higher learning:

Donna Alt is in the Winfield School of Nursing preparing herself for her chosen profession.  Shirley Mitchell, Gary Munsinger and John Yantis are attending Pittsburg Teachers College.  Maurine Brown Mitchell, Wanda Lanning Clark, Donna Sanborn Dellinger, Carol West Morgan and Katherine VanBuskirk Mitchell are married and becoming homemakers.  Allen Criger and Orvan Preston are at home farming with their fathers.  Bob Criger, Carder Hobson, Dan Miller, Don Miller, Dexter Stephens, Arlen Willich, Dean Wyant, Donald Young, and Glenn Vick are in the armed forces.

Jeanine Doughty is in Omaha, Nebraska, attending an Electronic school.  Irene Hebb recently completed her training in the same school and has accepted a position with a railroad company in Amarillo, Texas.  Paul Gray is in California.  Frederick Miller is attending college in Emporia. Carl Morgan is married and employed in Wichita.  Vance Shipman is employed by the Gibbon Lumber Company in Howard.  Arletta Signer and Phyllis Julian are working in Wichita.  Bill Threlfall is a pre-medical student at Kansas University.  Deloris VanBuskirk is working in Coffeyville.

Wherever these folks are, we feel sure that the people of Howard would be proud to say they are the finished product from our public schools and we extend best wishes to them.--School Reporter.

[W. Gray]

If there were 26 seniors graduating in 1956, how many were there last year?

[genealogynut]

Waldo,  I thought I would try to find the answer to your question today, but didn't get to.  I went to the Elk River Festival and had hoped the Cox Building would be unlocked so that I could looik at the pictures of the graduating students that they have hanging on the wall, but the building was locked.  (I guess they still put the pictures on the wall of those that graduate from West Elk).  Anyway, I had good intentions.

[Janet Harrington]

The pictures of the West Elk kids are hanging at West Elk.  I'll try to dig out last year annual and see if I know how to count.  I might even make it easier and just ask Cotton Johnson.  He graduated in 2006.  He might remember how many kids were in his graduating class.

[W. Gray]

Thanks to both,

I am just curious. Everyone seems to talk about the declining kid population in Elk County.

We have our annual Miller-Dorsey-Hull family reunion in the Cox Building each year and I think they quit putting the pictures up in there some time ago.

There were 402 seniors in my graduationg class back in 1959 in Independence, Mo. Knew everyone of them at the time but now can recognize only a few when looking through the year book.

[Janet Harrington]

The last class to be placed there was my class, 1972.  1973 could be put there, but they chose to not hang it there.  I believe it still is at Mike McLean's house.  1974 which was the first West Elk High School graduating class hangs at West Elk.

[Janet Harrington]

In 2005, West Elk graduated 42 students in 2005.  I don't know yet about the 2006 #'s.