MEMORY LANE — CLASS HISTORY

LHS Class of 1965 — Originators

Accomplishments listed in The 1965 Log include...

• First class to complete four years in new high school
• First freshmen to compete in Class A athletic division
• First freshmen to compete in swimming & wrestling
• Produced handbook for incoming freshmen
• First class to initiate and produce sophomore play
• First class to initiate use of Class Council
• First class to welcome three exchange students
• First class to witness two athletes place in state wrestling
• Participated in Thanksgiving & Christmas basket drives
• First class to lead SCC championship in swimming & wrestling
• Participated in March of Dimes bread drive
• Funded class projects through concession stand, class directory and sweatshirt sales
• Donated Homecoming throne to school
• First class to produce school musical
• Thirteen percent of class earned Honor Roll credits during senior year
• Two class members earned National Merit Scholarship recognition & many won scholarships
• First wrestling team to win South Central Conference Championship
• First wrestling team to place in top 4 of state championship
• First swim team to win South Central Conference Championship
• First swim team to place in top 4 of state championship

As the endearing excitement of pep rallies, Motown sounds, Goguac parties, cruising the gut, Friday night football, Fantasy productions, tennis court and cafeteria dances and the production of the first LHS musical gave way to living with the threat of nuclear war, the assassination of a president, the Vietnam War, a sexual revolution, drugs, rock-and-roll and radical politics, our reactions were varied. Some of us were affected greatly and others only minimally.

As you may know, co-author David Wallace/Wallechinsky (son of celebrated author Irving Wallace) first profiled our class in 1976 with his bestseller What Really Happened to the Class of '65?

Then, ten years later, he followed it with Midterm Report, The Class of '65: Chronicles of an American Generation.

The jacket cover of Midterm Report summarizes...

For the nation's high school class of '65, the vanguard of America's Baby Boom, life has taken some surprising turns in the last twenty years. Here are their stories—diverse, dramatic, happy, and harrowing—vividly told in their own voices.

Conceived in the victorious afterglow of the "Good War" and born into an era of promise and prosperity, the Baby Boom generation graduated into the dark days of the Vietnam War. The first generation to grow up with the threat of nuclear war, with television, space exploration, "the Pill," and LSD, it found itself on the cutting edge of a period of confrontation, questioning, and transformation. Ten years ago David Wallechinsky, co-author of the bestseller What Really Happened to the Class of '65?, reported the effects of a turbulent decade on members of his own high school class. Now, another and very different decade later, Wallechinsky has traveled across the nation to gather personal chronicles of the generation as it reaches the midpoint of its journey through life.

To discover his generation anew, Wallechinsky interviewed men and women of widely varying backgrounds—career military officers and draft resisters, fundamentalist preachers and human rights activists, lawyers, farmers, factory workers and entrepreneurs, single mothers and divorced fathers. Midterm Report, a fascinating work of oral history, presents twenty-eight people candidly telling the stories of their lives, of facing the problems their parents warned them about and challenges their parents couldn't have dreamed of. Taken together, these remarkable true-life narratives fashion an intimate and broad portrait of an American generation on the verge of power.