The Class of ‘38

Sussex High School’s first class gets together after 68 years By Mike Celizic Sussex - There aren’t many left, just 19 out of the 110 fresh-faced kids who made up the first class of seventh-graders in the brand new, two-story school on Loomis Street that had just been built on a site recently occupied by Tracy Loomis’ barn. They graduated six years later, in 1938, and went their separate ways, which for many meant settling down and raising families in and around the little borough in which they had grown up. Every ten years, they’d get together to reminisce about high school, their numbers shrinking as the years went by. They would have been due to get together again in 2008, but Julia Devine, who grew up in Sussex and lives there still, decided that, at an age when people joke that they never buy green bananas, it didn’t make sense to wait that long. “We didn’t think we were going to make it to 70,” explained the petite woman who had twice served as a Sussex Borough councilwoman. “So we went for 68.” Six of the 23 surviving members of that first graduating class of Sussex High School answered her invitations and, on Thursday, July 13, they gathered in a back room of the Bella Vita Inn in Wantage, just up Route 23 from their old school, now the Sussex Middle School. They decided to meet in the early afternoon “because we didn’t want to drive at night.” It didn’t hurt that there was a extensive and inexpensive luncheon buffet at that time, too. In 1938, when farming was still the backbone of the local economy, getting a high school diploma wasn’t as important as it is today. Of the 110 students who entered seventh grade in the fall of 1931, 65 got their diplomas on Friday, June 17, 1938. Forty of the graduates were girls; 25 boys. Over the years, 42 have passed away - 21 females and 21 males, leaving 19 women and two men left. Two members of their class were African-American girls, Dorothy and Edith Vialet. When the class went to Washington, D.C. for its senior trip, they were surprised to find that there were restaurants and other public places that “coloreds” couldn’t enter. Though the Vialets had to stay in a separate hotel, the grads said, they refused to go into other places where their classmates weren’t welcomed. In a visit to Fredricksburg during the trip, they were shocked to learnt they couldn’t all sit together in the balcony of a movie theater, because that was “colored only.” “That’s when I learned about segregation,” said George Clark. “I didn’t know anything about it.” The six who got together included Clark, who came up from his retirement home in Florida. The others were Devine, class salutatorian Wahneta Young Fountain of Branchville, Nathalie Smith Carl of Hamburg, Madeline Ellett Clark Coykendall of Sussex, and Jennie Buss Potts of Ewing. They are all in their mid-80s, but they still get around. And they still remember life in simpler times. Though they grew up during the Great Depression, none of them felt that they had been deprived as kids. The farming economy helped; if there wasn’t a lot of money for extras, there was always food they grew themselves. “We had good milk, with cream on the top,” said Devine. They also say that they never felt bored in those days when kids had to entertain themselves. “The school was always open,” said Devine. “We used to go down on Saturdays and play basketball. In the winter, there was ice skating and skiing.” The town used to close Newton Avenue in the winter so the kids could ride their sleds on it. Fountain remembers her father tying ropes to the bumper of his car and towing kids back up the hill for another run. “We never had anything, but we didn’t feel poor,” Devine said. “We never went hungry,” added Potts. Main Street in Sussex was a busy place in those days. On weekends, they might take in a movie at the little gem of a theater that is now the Tri-State Actors Theater. Folks who lived in the town always went to the movies on Friday nights, they said, because on Saturday night, the farmers would come to see a movie, and in those days, personal hygiene in the country wasn’t what it is today. Another thing that was different was the constant presence of Christianity in the classroom. The baccalaureate service was held in the Sussex Methodist Church. The service included a play, “Treasure Island,” and a ceremony in which the valedictorian, Seymour Charles, passed the “Key of Knowledge” to the top scholar in the junior class, who happened to be his sister, Flora. There were ten teachers in the school, a principal and an assistant principal, making for a better student-teacher ratio that you’ll find today. All the talk wasn’t about the good old days. There was some updating to do, too. “I just became a great-grandmother,” Devine announced as they were getting down to dessert. “I’m a great-great-grandmother,” answered Fountain. No reply was necessary.