Boy, Have High Schools Changed!

My, have high schools changed! As I began reflecting on my high school years, and looking through my old year books, even I had to smile. In some ways they were definitely better, and in others the schools today have the edge. Let me begin by describing Granite High School, my alma mater. It was about four miles from home and was one of the oldest high schools in Salt Late, consisting of three major buildings. The "L" building (I'm not sure what the L stood for) was the original and oldest of the three. It had three stories of classrooms and a basement swimming pool. The "S" (science) building) housed science, English, foreign language, and art classes. It was two stories high. The newest and best of all the buildings was the Cultural Arts Bldg. and Gymnasium. The theater in this building was "state of the art" in that day. It had a large stage with fly tower, soft theater seats that were on a slope, and even a balcony where yearly performances of popular musicals were put on. This building also contained a large gymnasium for sports, and a smaller girl's gym. There were also classrooms for band and orchestra as well as a basement rooms which were used mostly for storage. Somewhere on campus was space for Home Economics (which included home nursing), auto mechanics, wood shop, business (typing and shorthand) and farm management. I never took any of these classes so I had no idea where they were.

There was no lack of clubs you could join if you had the time for extra curricular activities. There was Gamma Mu Sigma (math club), Pro Lita (literature club), Glee Club (vocal music), Language(French and Spanish), Drama, Commercial (business), Pep Club (Farmerettes), Music, Future Farmers of America, and Swim Club, just to mention a few. Needless to say I didn't have time for clubs until the Civil Air Patrol was introduced on campus in my junior year. I have always been interested in aviation, so I took a class in aeronautics and joined the CAP. More about that later.

We were furnished individual lockers, much like today, in which to store our coats and books. Lockers were inside all buildings, so you might have to run quite far to get to your locker if it was not in a building where most of your classes were. We didn't use backpacks to carry our books....I don't think they even existed back then. We just carried our books in our arms on top of our three ring binders. And yes, we had homework which required us to carry our books that way all the way home, even in the rain and snow.

Because we had three years in junior high school, I was fifteen when I began as a sophomore at Granite. Much like today my classes consisted of English, History, Math (Algebra), science and Seminary. I continued on with art and orchestra as my electives. You may wonder about that "Seminary" class. Yes, it was one of my classes. In Utah back then (maybe even today) we had released time from school to attend seminary. It was just like another class during the day. The Church had a seminary building with four classrooms across the street from the school. The classes taught during the three years were Old Testament, New Testament, and Church History...no Book of Mormon.

Competitive sports at our high school included football, basketball, baseball, tennis, track, golf, and skiing....boys teams only with the exception of skiing. There were no other sports in which girl's could compete unless you call cheerleading and Pep Club sports. Talk about discrimination!! But way back in the early fifties we hardly knew the meaning of that word. It was rarely used like it is today in demanding equal rights. I was never really concerned about so called "equal rights" for women (girls). I was happy just being who I was. I never felt deprived of anything.

This was probably a boring overview of my high school, but next I will share my personal experiences while there which I'm sure will be much more interesting.