A lot changes in 50 years.
In 1962 Reno High School girls used Scotch tape to make their bangs lie flat. Today they use flat irons.
In 1962 Reno teens listened to Bobby Vinton and Chubby Checker records. Today Flo Rida and Katy Perry are top picks on iTunes.
In 1962 girls could not participate in competitive sports at Reno High. Today the Lady Huskies compete in nine different sports. They can even wrestle with the boys if they want to.
“We weren’t supposed to sweat or compete,” 1962 Reno High grad Mo Curtin Eaton said as she toured her alma mater July 14 during the class’s 50th reunion weekend.
While male members of the class admired their old trophies still on display and rehashed football injury stories, Eaton recalled having to play half-court basketball games with teammates more concerned about breaking a nail or messing up their beehive hairdos. Other girls made fun of Eaton’s love of sports and competition.
“It came naturally to me. The rules made sense,” said Eaton, who was voted “Most Athletic” in the yearbook. “The only time people copied my papers was in P.E.”
In those pre-Title IX days the only option for “jockettes” like Eaton was joining the Girls Athletic Association Club (GAA). Instead of competitive matches against other schools, the girls had “play days.” Instead of practices, they held fund-raiser fashion shows.
“It was nuts. It was a whole different day and time,” Eaton said. “But I loved every minute of it.”
Eaton’s male counterparts, former jocks like Robbie Robinson, recalled a very different experience.
“I was extremely lucky to be one of the better athletes. I was well recognized,” said Robinson, for whom high school was “80 percent sports, 20 percent education.”
In 1962 girls also had to take a back seat to boys in terms of student leadership. But just as Eaton longed to play full-court basketball, Pamela Weir-Quiton aspired to be student body president, an office traditionally held by boys.
“I wanted to run the assemblies. I wanted the microphone and I wanted to introduce the acts,” Weir-Quiton said. “I wanted to be Ed Sullivan.”
In the primary, Weir-Quiton ran against five boys who split each other’s votes.
“I either won the primary or came in second,” Weir-Quiton said. “Then there was the general election and, of course, I lost.”
According to Weir-Quiton, her boundary-pushing candidacy divided the school. Some couples that had been together a long time broke up over the election.
“Sometimes the girl was into me and the guy was like, ‘I will never vote for a girl. Never, never, never.’ Sometimes the guy was for me and the girl was like, ‘Girls should not be running for president,’” Weir-Quiton said.
With her spiky hair and hip eyeglasses, Weir-Quiton, an artist in Venice Beach, Calif., still stands out from her fellow grads.
“For you to be avant garde before you knew you were avant garde is big,” classmate Phyllis Goytino Cates said.
While the Class of ’62 may have disagreed on whether Reno High School was ready for a female student body president, 50 years later they agree on one thing.
“This was the best class ever,” reunion committee co-chair Margo Ford Sheltra said.
“We were the best class. The year was right,” Robinson said.
Their class was the last to graduate from Reno High when it was the only high school in town. Wooster High School opened the following fall. They feel that made them a special class.
“We were very close,” Jo Davis said. “And we still are to this day.”
Their closeness was on display with “lots of hugs and love” at the meet-and-greet dinner July 13 at Pinocchio’s, according to Carol Sanderson Freeman.
When they toured their old school together the next morning, they couldn’t stop chatting it up, even when the principal was trying to talk. Kris Hackbusch, the new young principal dressed in shorts and a red Huskies golf shirt, failed to instill the fear that their principal Mr. Finch did back in 1962.
“You sure don’t look like our principal,” Susan Robinson Murray told Hackbusch after he finished explaining the new Promethean boards that have replaced the chalkboards. “He never smiled.”
The room full of high school friends sitting in rows of wooden desks cracked up.
A lot changes in 50 years.
But some things—jokes about principals, the laughter of old friends—never do.