Michael Patashnick, left, Paul McKane and Sheila Blair, standing in for her father, late Principal Stephen Drotter, recreate a 1967 photo of the monument's dedication.
The marker has been moved closer to the new front entrance of Colegrove Park Elementary School.
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — A long-forgotten monument from the class of 1966 was rededicated on Friday as part of the Drury High School class's 50th reunion.
The gift to Drury featured an engraving of the Eternal Flame and the quote by John F. Kennedy "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."
But the fact that there was a monument was a surprise to many of the class members, including the two representatives who were pictured in the local newspapers attending a dedication ceremony on Memorial Day in 1967.
"No one remembered it. No one remembered its origin," said class member Donna Bona Morgan, who then laughed, "but you realize we are the class of '66."
It was classmate Ed Marinaro who spearheaded the small granite monument's recovery, not dissimilar to the work he's been doing with the Hill Side Cemetery restoration group. He, too, didn't remember the class buying it, but recalled seeing it when he returned from the service in 1972. When work began on what is now Colegrove Park Elementary School, he contacted school officials.
"When they started the reconstruction, I saw the heavy equipment," he said. "I called [facilities director] Matt Neville and said we got to get that out of there before it gets damaged."
The stone was stored at the City Yard during construction and the class, in addition to its scholarship pledge, made funds available for a new bronze plaque from Berkshire Monument.
Marinaro was able to track down the original ceremony and find a photo from, he said, The Berkshire Eagle. A very similar described photo on the front page of the former North Adams Transcript shows Michael Patashnick and Paul McKane standing with late Principal Stephen Drotter at the stone, which sat for decades next to a flagpole in a circle on the East Main Street side of what would later become Conte Middle School.
No one knows why the class gifted the stone and the accompanying story in the Transcript gives no explanation. But, certainly, the late president's calls for service must have been on their minds. He was assassinated in the fall of 1963 when the class was entering its sophomore year.
Their graduation came in the midst of a changing nation, with a moon landing just three years away, "Star Trek" hitting the airwaves, the Civil Rights movement sweeping the nation, and rock music, feminism, and the Vietnam War heating up.
"In 1966, it was a very exciting time to be on the threshold of adulthood," said Superintendent Barbara Malkas in welcoming the class back the halls of its high school. The event was held in the new gymnasium that had been the auditorium for the class of 1966.
Mayor Richard Alcombright recalled some of the iconic local names of the time — like Drotter, Merrigan, Boisvert and Del Negro — and their impact on education.
Sheila Drotter Blair, standing in for her father, declared that his ban on dancing the Twist was lifted to her classmates' applauding approval.
"He loved the class of 1966," she said. "Now that we're a little older and we have kids in school I think maybe we all appreciate the stern kind of discipline he had as an administrator here.
"But he really was a big softie inside and really cared about everybody."
Blair remembered the first time she'd entered the building at age 9 after moving to North Adams from Maine, and later the pep rallies, speaking contests, dances, classes and teachers.
The restoration of the old high school into an elementary school had caused "some community angst," Alcombright told them. The school reopened in January. "Now that the children are in roaming these halls, I think the community has embraced this beautiful building and its rebirth. ...
"I hope this tour brings back wonderful memories."
Nearly 80 class members and guests toured the building, recalling teachers and pranks, friends and classrooms. There was the time a chemical reaction filled a third-floor science lab with smoke, forcing the students to flee. Or when a contingent of Texas exchange students broke the unwritten rules on separate seating for boys and girls. It was, one woman said, "gentle nostalgia."
Others had trouble recognizing their former high school, trying to recollect the much-changed spaces.
"I don't even recognize it as the same school we went to," said Mary Lou Lamarre Moreau, who lived in the state of Florida for 32 years before moving to Louisville, Ky. "I really expected to go in, and maybe home room might have been different, but even the numbers aren't the same."
Rosie Boulerice James, who married a classmate and moved to Westport, said, "they really did a fantastic job and it's really lovely."
Schools are not just buildings, Malkas said.
"They are spaces that host our memories of a time in our lives that in hindsight seem to have been less complicated and in some instances more exciting and filled with possibilities," she said. "This school remains as a monument to those who walked through the hallways."
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