Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Lawrence Park High School
Lawrence Park High School was a school ahead of its time. I'm not sure we appreciated that when we were students there, but now it seems clear. The school existed for only 30 years, from 1933 until about 1966. (I'm not sure of the exact date.) Because Lawrence Park is such a small community it seemed that everyone in both the community and the school was connected in some way. Even now, an annual picnic for all the graduating classes, always held on the last weekend of July, draws a big crowd.
Some of the teachers were there long enough to teach not only the brothers and sisters of former students, but also their children and maybe even their grandchildren. Jessie Skala, for example, taught my mother (Dorothy Schmock Wentz, Class of 1934) and Sadie Richards Wilson (Class of l933). The teachers, for the most part, were of the highest caliber and dedicated to their profession. I'm thinking of people like Jessie (I feel I can call her by her first name now), Ed Poly, Mr. (Clarence?) Brown, William Kring, Grace Smith, Robert Vislosky, and Howard Schilken who patiently (and sometimes impatiently) weathered the awful sounds of the high school band and orchestra in daily rehearsal. The school was run with tight discipline by Harry Rhodes and Dan Skala. Discipline was not really a problem in those days, but the few forays off the beaten path were handsomely thwarted by these two. And who can forget Jessie's insistence on the annual ritual of crossing arms and singing "Auld Lang Syne" before the Christmas break.
It was a community in every sense of the word, and the school reflected this fact.
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