Graduation Dance Night
May 8, 1964
Thanks to Christine Shatilla Emery for sending this important bit of history, and to Bonnie MacGregor Howard for keeping the ticket for about 30 years and then giving it and some of the photos on this page to Christine shortly before Bonnie died. Thanks also to Russsell Sharp who bought the ticket for $4 and then gave it to Bonnie. (With the cost of living increase from 1964 to 2023, the ticket today would cost about $40.)
Joanna Warwick, Bert Kidd, Janis Riven and Mark Goldman
Tom Vikander, Mary Brian, Ginny Tatam and Steve Mulhall
Russell Sharp and Bonnie MacGregor Howard
Alan Mirabelli (MRCHS) and Linda Nixon Trippel
Ed. Note: Alan must have spent time around MRHS checking out the MRHS women
—he later married Tarrel Tingley.
Christine Shatilla Emery (without her date, Greg Harmon)
Barbara Hawkins Rager and Bill Forbes
Back: Ron Sevigny (cut off), Russell Sharpe, Greg Harmon, Trevor Sevigny,
Jim Brown, Chris Hoodspith
Front: Joan Morrison Smyth, Bonnie MacGregor Howard, Christine Shatilla Emery,
Barbara Smith Forsyth, Marcia Gautschi Rioux, Sharon Kenwood Johnston
Back: Allan Lanthier, Ron Sevigny, Russell Sharp
Front: Joanne Stuart Martin, Joan Morrison Smyth, Bonnie MacGregor Howard
Richard Grant, Bonnie MacGregor Howard, Rod Allen, Trevor Sevigny
Don White and Greg Harmon
Christine Shatilla Emery
Thoughts on the Grad Dance Experience
In spite of the look of fear in Bill Forbes' face in our photo above, he was actually a good date. I seem to remember he had a car..., or else someone had one and we drove from party to party.
I couldn't stand the thought, however, of our PARENTS sitting in the gym balconies watching their dear little ones stumble around the floor, dash from table to table, act idiotic, and dance the same steps Mrs. Richards' people had taught us at Dunrae. God what a bad idea that was to let our parents into our dance for our special night. AND the parents were supposed to sit there in the dark without our knowledge. Just the parents plunked into that balcony to watch their kids come into adulthood without their kids knowing. As if that could happen. It was the all time low point of the evening.
I mean why didn't Daddy take some more movies with 1000 watt lights like he had for our Grade 8 party—not too terribly embarrasing.
But on the other hand I/we owe a huge vote of thanks to the parents who opened their homes and their grocery lists so that we could have a perpetual party from dusk to dawn. That was really well orchestrated and appreciated. In spite of one of the motivations being to keep us in the Town and not travel up to the mountain to watch the submarine races..... we did anyway.
And then it snowed and the dye in all the shoes trickled down the street sewers. But the big moment wasn't for me at all. It was a little gift to a dear old lady, whose patience my six year old self had tested to its limit years earlier.
I was getting my hair done in a beauty shop. There were five clients, all sitting around a circular desk of sorts where the stylists all worked on us, and we could chat with each other. I didn't have a lot to say at that point. I think it was the first time I had ever sat in a salon stool. I was the only client who still had her original teeth. The other four were into the blue hair time of their lives. I was wrapped up in the marvel of it all until out of the corner of my eye, sitting at the same desk post, I saw an older woman, actually quite an older woman, with a dreamy look on her face. Suddenly I realized it was Miss Hatfield. This dear lady had been my Grade One teacher at Dunrae Gardens about ten years earlier.
"Miss Hatfield, wow, hello!"
"Hello," she quietly chimed.
"I'm going to my prom tonight." Why did I say that?
"I know," she smiled again.
This coincidental meeting obviously held more meaning for her than it had for me. But even right now, and it's what, now some 56 years later, I can feel those mild, warm, old eyes locked on me in the beauty salon.
How did the rest of you feel about our grad night? I really loved it "notwithstanding" the old folks spying on us. Tell me what grad night was like for you....
Barb Rager