Kelso High School memories: 1960 to 1964
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 4:45 PM PDT
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E-mail this articleCelebrating Kelso's 100th graduating class
Carole (Gunderson) Chancellor and Ruthann (Fuqua) Johnson, Class of 1960
A tradition for members of the senior class was to paint a message on the street in front of the school.
This was usually done by boys of the class — enter several senior girls who wanted to be the first of the year to sign in.
A night was chosen and paint gathered. Arriving at the school, we found it lighted up like a Christmas tree as a meeting was being held inside the building. That didn’t deter us as we painted our message proclaiming our class spirit. As we finished, out of her nearby house came Mrs. Marcelus, the girls’ counselor, with a flashlight in hand. We scattered behind buses and houses as she tried to catch us. When she gave up, we quickly left.
The next day at school, we saw our handiwork had been covered up with a layer of sand.
What was our message we wanted everyone to see? “Gay Gals of 60.” It was a simple time in 1960, when gay only meant happy.
At lunchtime we would walk to the “girls store” and buy a cream puff from Fraser’s bakery and a bottle of pop. By the time we were back at school, the bottle was empty. We had no problem getting rid of the empties as classmate Monte Fitchett’s little brother and his friend, Joe, were always out with a little wagon to collect them. That little boy, Joe, grew up to be Joe Stewart, the track coach for whom the Kelso track is named.
One day I came out of a classroom during class time and ran into Coach Otto Kofler riding piggyback style on the back of Coach Primo Brusco.
They made me promise not to tell on them. They were just big kids.
Jan M. Searing, Class of 1961
I graduated from Kelso High in 1961, and I have great memories of my years there.
I had some great teachers, but the one that was my favorite was Bob Jellison. He taught English, which was not my favorite subject. I think it was in my junior year that I first had Mr. Jellison. The first quarter I received a ‘D’ from him. He got me aside and said that he knew I could do a lot better, and then he contacted my folks and told them the same thing. Needless to say, I changed my ways. He taught us about poems and stories and about the great authors. “The Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Gunga Din” by Rudyard Kipling and “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe are just a few that I remember. If it hadn’t been for Bob Jellison I probably would never been exposed to that kind of literature. By the end of the term I had pulled a ‘B’ in Mr. Jellison’s class.
My brother Larry graduated in 1954 from Kelso High. He told me that him and some of his classmates that played golf wanted to form a golf team at Kelso High and they asked Mr. Jellison if he would coach it. He was still the coach when I played for him on the JV team.
Bob Jellison was a very soft-spoken, gentle man. And the students that had him for a teacher know what a teacher he was.
Dale Davis, Class of 1963
As a 1963 graduate let me take you back to an October Friday night in 1962 when as a senior. I was in Aberdeen with the football team preparing to take on the Bobcats in a league game during a season when they were at that time undefeated. We Hilanders were ready to play, had our game faces on and were warming up. It was an eerily calm night, a strange dampness and not a breath of air moving, completely still but we were ready to kick some Bobcat butt!
In the blink of an eye we were in complete darkness, the lights went out in the stadium? Not just the stadium but the whole town? We were taken back into the pitch black locker room where we dressed by the light of several Zippos the loggers up there had, and if I remember correctly, one dim flashlight.
By the time coaches Kofler, Piper, Eagle and Brusco loaded us back on the bus, the game had been canceled, the wind had picked up and off we went back to Kelso disappointed at not being able to play.
I remember seeing two pickups full of men with chainsaws in front of us and one pickup full behind cutting trees out of the road. Trees along the highway were blowing down like toothpicks in a gail? You guessed it, the Columbus day storm of 1962! It was daylight by the time we got home and there was no power anywhere. We didn’t get back to Kelso until around 6:30 or 7. Strangest calm I’ve ever witnessed!
But more memories, being part of a state championship team that won the state championship five years in a row and my pride at being the individual state champion during the state fair in 1962! I do not believe that any other team in Hilander history had the winning streak of state championships or competition championships that those teams from 1958 through 1962 had! Just to follow in the footsteps of my older brother and his teammates and keep that streak going under the guidance of agriculture teacher Don Jackson still fills me with pride! Five state champion poultry judging trophies in a row! Ok, ok it may not seem like a big deal to you but for us it was a great experience with a great teacher!
How about one more? The opening of the bridge across the Cowlitz at the Longview Wye in the spring of 1961. I think — not sure about the year or time of year. Being in the Hilander band that crossed that bridge under the direction of Mr. Butler and being a freshman trombone player, I was among the very first to get to the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Yep, even our band swelled with pride in those days!
— Dale Davis, an Ostrander boy from the class of 1963 that still bleeds yellow and gold!
Susan (Woodard) Fiskvik, Class of 1964
On the first day of school we would gather in the auditorium. The senior class always garnered the center section with juniors on their left and the sophomore class to the right. No one dared sit in the wrong section.
Getting lost was a big part of my first day. The school was a mish-mash of hallways, stairs and ramps. At the top of one ramp was the “study hall.” It was a long narrow room with a door at each end and tall windows on one side, which looked out to a mind-numbing brick wall. A desk was there for whichever teacher or advisor was stuck for that hour, along with desks for over 100 kids. I do not remember ever doing one minute of studying there. Instead, we gossiped about who was dating who, what time to meet for the game, passed notes, and on occasion, napped.
One year I had a typing class at the far west end of the school and a history class following it at the opposite corner. It took everyone of my 10 minutes between classes to bob and weave my way through students so as not to be late. If I had to stop by my locker, I was doomed.
In November of my senior year I was sitting in my bookkeeping class when someone came in and told us President Kennedy had been shot. I remember all of us, including the teacher, sitting in stunned silence. A short time later we learned he had died. Some of the girls were crying and everyone just moved along to their next class in a trance. We were let out of school right after lunch and met at a friend’s house, where we spent the afternoon watching the TV coverage.
A lighter note was the excitement and frenzy of the days leading up to the annual Turkey Day game. We would have a rivalry among the classes to see which one could have the biggest bonfire for the rally held on Thanksgiving eve. The seniors always won this contest even if they had to steal from the underclassmen’s heap. My friend Peggy (Parsons) Longre got her dad to drive a bunch of us girls around in his pickup to gather wood. When one of our friends swung around with a big board she hit poor Lenny on the side of his head, almost knocking him out. He was such a good guy he just winced a little, smiled and on we went. It was good to be in high school in the ’60s.
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