History at a Glace

For the special Homecoming edition on Oct. 22, 1951, reporters from the Shelton High School newspaper, "The Saghalie," interviewed several SHS "students of yesteryear." This story is from those interviews.

Mrs. Horace Crary (Geneva Sargison) was in the second class to graduate from Shelton High School, in 1911. The 50 high school students occupied the upper floor of the newly built Lincoln School and "were principally interested in education, since activities were few." Team sports offered opportunities for student get-togethers; a favorite was taking a large horse-drawn wagon to out-of-town games. Loyal rooters would leave Shelton at 6 a.m., cheer a game in Elma, and be back in Shelton around midnight. Other activities included junior and senior proms and plays. The proms weren't held as dances but as parties at private homes. The entire student body participated in school plays. Mrs. Crary also recalled that choosing the school colors of red and black had been a difficult decision among the student body.

The Class of 1924, the first to graduate from Irene S. Reed High School, consisted of 39 students. One of them was Roy McConkey, who by 1951 was a pharmacist and owner of both McConkey's Pharmacy and Fir Drugs. McConkey said that even though classes were much larger now, students still had some of the same problems, including "not enough money and not enough cars." Having been a happy resident of Shelton for 45 years, McConkey urged high school students to stay in Shelton or the surrounding area after graduation.

T. D. Deer was also a 1924 graduate. In 1951 he had been Shelton's Fire Chief for seven years. Deer, who had played football, basketball, and baseball, told the Saghalie there had been few extracurricular activities other than sports. He added that it had not been considered "lady like" for girls to be song queens, so usually they had only one boy leading their yells.

Lawrence Carlson was a graduate of the Class of 1925. By 1951, Carlson was manager of the Shelton Branch of Seattle First National Bank. He had played basketball and baseball, but said that "entertainment didn't take up much of our after school hours because we always had chores and more chores to do. Sometimes as a reward for the week we might be allowed to see a movie, but there was no shake shop to meet in afterward." Asked what moment of his high school years he remembered best, Carlson said, "Why, I believe that moment came when I wore my first long pants. It was on the day we were marched up from old Lincoln High School to the new Irene S. Reed building. That was a big event in all our lives."

Mrs. Eugene Brown (Phyllis Libby), class of 1926 and head cook at the high school cafeteria in 1951, said that Irene S. Reed High School had originally been smaller – a wing was added to the back of the building in 1938. In 1926, one room served as both study hall and auditorium and there was no cafeteria. Students ate lunch in the social hall, which was also used for dances and parties, with music provided by an old player piano. The main dance of the year was the junior-senior prom, which was held at the Memorial Hall and preceded by a banquet. Instead of having a senior picnic, the class of '26 had a three-day trip to Mount Rainier. For senior sneak, the class spent the night in the social hall. Mrs. Brown, who had lived near Arcadia and taken a rowboat back and forth to school at Agate until tenth grade, remembered being happy to be driven to Irene S. Reed High School in a 12-passenger Ford bus.

Lincoln School was demolished in 1958 and the site is now home to the Shelton Civic Center. Irene S. Reed High School was demolished in 1985 and replaced by the William G. Reed library.

■ Jan Parker is a researcher for the Mason County Historical Museum. She can be reached at [email protected]. Membership in the Mason County Historical Society is $25 per year. For a limited time, new members will receive a free copy of the book "Shelton, the First Century Plus Ten."