On Monday, Staples High School holds its 137th graduation ceremony.
Over 415 young men and women will receive diplomas, leave the Class of 2024 behind, and head out to a dangerous, unpredictable world.
More than 80 years ago, the world was even more dangerous and unpredictable.
In the 1942-43 school year, the school paper Inklings reported, wartime shortages made “the candy table supply look quite pathetic.” Mounds, Hershey Bars, O. Henry, Baby Ruth all disappeared.
Students with last period study hall were allowed to leave school early. Some worked for local industries manufacturing items needed for the war effort.
Others harvested crops on local farms, replacing older men who had been called up to serve.
The Junior Red Cross organized a scrap and tin drive. Art classes made booklets for men in Army hospitals, and contributed posters to local bond drives.
William Torno’s shop classes built 4 wood rifle racks, each holding 32 guns, for the Westport Defense Training Unit. He added an oxyacetylene course too, in the newly important skill of welding.
Bill Torno (rear) supervises a 1940s Staples High School shop class.
Miss Ossi’s home economics classes made nearly 100 cotton hospital bags. The Navy came to Staples, and gave exams for the V-12 College Training program.
A Commando Course, combining gymnastics and swimming, was held every Tuesday from 1 to 3 p.m. at the downtown YMCA (now Anthropologie), not far from the Riverside Avenue school (now Saugatuck Elementary). Instruction included diving from the side of a burning ship, and swimming under water while oil burned on the surface.
On other days boys wrestled, boxed and marched. The Commando and intensive gym courses were mandatory for all high school boys.
In perhaps the most chilling reminder of the war’s effect, 10 of the 100 graduates of the Class of 1943 – exactly 10 percent – did not attend commencement ceremonies. The stars next to their names meant they had already left school, to serve in the armed forces. The Staples High School yearbook was dedicated to them.
The “new” Staples High School opened on Riverside Avenue in 1937. When the Class of 1943 graduated, it was just 7 years old.
The next year, the 88-member Class of 1944 included 7 more service members.
At an assembly 6 months earlier, principal Douglas Young set a minimum but difficult goal of $25,000 for the 4th nationwide War Bond Drive. Six months later, the results were announced: Staples students had raised a whopping $39,500. That made graduation night special.
So did the sudden appearance, in full uniform, of Airman Sebastian (Sebby) Lauterbach. He joined the class in time to march to the stage for the ceremony.
The memory became even more poignant a few months later, when he was one of two members of the class killed in combat.
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