March 13, 2013

4 of 65

WHERE WERE WE IN ’63?

I was a student throughout the 1960s – first elementary school, then junior high, then high school and finally college.  I got my bachelor’s degree at the end of the 1969-70 school year.  In many ways, the ‘60s seem to have started for me when I started high school.  I seem to meet a number of people these days who grew up attending Catholic schools.  I never really wanted to do that, but my parents thought, for some reason, that I should try it.  Regis Jesuit High School was the closest Catholic high school to our house – though it was still more than 10 miles away – and it had an excellent academic reputation.  I took the entrance exam and was accepted and I attended Regis during the 1962-63 school year.  Besides being far away, the tuition was expensive and all of my childhood friends were still going to public schools.  I mentioned to my parents that although it was interesting to have spent my freshman year receiving a Jesuit education, I would rather go back to a public school and save them some money.  As luck would have it, a brand new high school was set to open for my sophomore year, and it was only a couple of miles from home.  I could walk there if necessary (which I did that several times), and my parents agreed that I should transfer.

Although I still think of it as a “new” school, Arvada West High School (Go, Wildcats!) is preparing to celebrate its 50^th Anniversary.  The first school year for Arvada West began on September 3, 1963.  At that time, you could buy a gallon of gas for 25 cents, a first class postage stamp was a nickel and the average annual income for Americans was less than $5,700.  The Beatles were popular, but the hottest songs on the radio that week were “My Boyfriend’s Back” by the Angels and Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet.”  “Louie, Louie” had been released a few weeks earlier and was creating controversy.  The recording by the Kingsmen was done so poorly that many of the words were unintelligible, leading some to believe they were obscene.  They were not, and in fact were the same words originally written by Richard Berry in 1955.  Arvada had become a home rule city earlier in the year and was involved in a debate over the need for urban renewal.  A week earlier, Martin Luther King, Jr. had made his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C.

None of that mattered much to the students that first opening day.  We were mostly rural and suburban kids.  We had a new school, were making new friends and had our own dreams.  The future was wide open and full of promise.  The Wildcats’ first football game was against Englewood High School (which was celebrating its 50^th Anniversary that year), and we won 18-10.  Junior running back Frank Campanella rushed for more yards than any Pirates’ opponent had managed in the past 50 years.  It looked like it would be a great football season – at least until the Jefferson County League games began.  Arvada West finished 0-7 in the league.  The first cross country season was much better.  Led by junior Peter Van Arsdale, who finished 4^th in the state meet, AWHS was the number one team in the county.

It’s hard to have a homecoming during a school’s first year as there are no alumni to come back.  Instead, we had a Football Dance, and nobody noticed the difference.

Thanksgiving Day, as you know, is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of each November.  The latest it can ever be is November 28^th – and that was when it fell in 1963.  There was going to be very little time between the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks from school, and the students – as always – were looking forward to the extended time off.  At the end of the week before Thanksgiving, on Friday, November 22^nd, we were having lunch in the cafeteria, chatting with friends, when a teacher approached our table, looking quite serious, and told us that President Kennedy had just been shot.  For some reason we thought he was kidding and we waited for a punch line.  None came.  School was cancelled for the entire week leading up to Thanksgiving and Americans spent days sitting in front of their television sets wondering what had really happened.  Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed assassin was himself murdered in the Dallas Police Station on live TV.

We returned to school on Monday, December 2^nd.  No one was talking about how bad the Denver Broncos had looked losing to the Oakland Raiders in a Thanksgiving Day game.  I don’t think anyone even asked why they had bothered to play that game.  We were all still in shock.  Nothing was ever going to be the same again.  Life had changed and the world had changed.

With or without change, though, life went on and the world went on.  1963 became 1964, and Arvada West had its first graduates; 1966 brought the graduation of those of us who were lowly sophomores when the school first opened (there were only three classes – 9^th grade was still a part of junior high school).  The 1960s became the 1970s, then the 80s and the 90s and then a whole new millennium.  The original school has been torn down and replaced with a more modern building which was built in two phases completed in 2002 and 2008.  Thousands of incoming freshmen or sophomores have graduated and become alumni.  There have been other tragedies that have left them in shock and wondering if life would ever be the same; and each time, life and the world have gone on.  Through it all, Arvada West High School, in some incarnation, is still there; the friends we made there remain, at the very least, in our memories; and the future truly is still wide open and full of promise.  So, Go Wildcats, go into that future!