Classmates share memories of the 50s and catch up on lives 55 years removed from Laconia High School days

TILTON — About 30 members of the Laconia High School Class of 1956 gathered at the Lochmere Country Club a week ago for a 55th class reunion.

"We had more planning to be here but the threat of bad weather from Hurricane Irene kept them from coming," said Bruce Papps, one of the 156 who graduated from Laconia High School that year and who had helped coordinate the reunion along with his wife, Joyce, also a member of the same class.

The class members came of age during the midst of the Cold War and saw the emergence of a new form of popular music, Rock ‘n Roll, as embodied in the person of Elvis Presley, whose song "Heartbreak Hotel" made it to the top of the charts in March and who would make his first national television performance performing "Hound Dog’’ on the Milton Berle Show on June 5, 1956. He would later appear (on split screen to avoid those shaking hips) on the Ed Sullivan Show in September.

Abroad, there were labor riots in Poland, Soviet party boss Nikita Khrushchev would denounce the "cult of personality" surrounding the late Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Later in the year he would send tanks into Budapest to crush the Hungarian revolution. Britain and France would later, with help from Israel, try to seize the Suez Canal from Egypt’s Gamal Nasser, a move opposed by the United States which would have huge repercussions for Anthony Eden’s government in Britain.

It was also the year that the Southern Manifesto, calling for permanent segregation, was drafted by Southern lawmakers as a response to the Supreme Court’s 1954 desegregation ruling (Brown v. Topeka Board of Education) and that President Dwight D. Eisenhower would sign the federal highway act, creating an interstate highway system which would forever change American commerce.

Rocky Marciano of Brockton, Mass., retired as the undefeated world heavyweight champion, a title which by the end of the year would pass to Floyd Patterson. And Don Larsen pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees in the World Series.

"My Fair Lady" opened on Broadway in March and videotape, which would work its own transformation on the world of news, was unveiled at the National Association of Broadcasters’ convention in Chicago.

It was an era where desktops were still wooden, political and personal conformity were cherished and where economic patriotism resonated strongly when an American corporation, General Motors, still producing virtually everything it made right in the United States, became the first corporation in history to record a billion dollar profit.

"If the economy back then was like it is today, I probably would have stayed in the Navy,’ ’says Papps, who would, after his service aboard an aircraft carrier, return to Laconia, marry his childhood sweetheart and work for 38 years at the O’Shea Industrial Park as a machinist with New Hampshire Ball Bearings and later it’s Astro Division.

For Bev Robinson Wheeler, who still works full-time at Team Outfitters in Goffstown, the biggest change in her everyday life is the computer.

"We didn’t grow up with computers. But now we’re on it every day," she says.

That same observation is shared by Robert Smith, the interim pastor of the Life Quest Church in Laconia, who says computers have become a necessity for virtually everyone and who uses his as a pastor to keep track of what’s happening with members of his church.

Smith, who still lives in New Hampton, attended Laconia High School as a tuition student from that community, riding to school with his father, Ray Smith, who was the city hall reporter for the Laconia Evening Citizen.

"It cost more than other schools for tuition but the town agreed to pay it because they didn’t have to pay for transportation,’’ he recalls.

There weren’t many sports teams for girls at Laconia High School at that time. That would have to wait until the 1970s and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act to take effect.

But the most famous athlete of the class was Penny Pitou, who had surreptitiously tried to compete in boys skiing events until she fell, losing her cap and revealing her long, blonde locks.

She raced for the U.S. Women’s Ski Team in the Winter Olympics at Cortina, Italy that year, gaining the experience which would help her win two silver medals four years later at Squaw Valley.

Robert King was an amateur photographer whose 1954 black and white photo "Lakeport at Night" still finds its way onto calendars. He says that while still in school he worked developing film for Maurice "Tubba" Aldrich and later for Bob St. Louis. He joined the Army after graduating from Laconia High School, served two tours of duty in Germany and came back to Laconia where he worked for 27 years as a tool and die maker for Aavid Engineering.

Walter Ayre, another 1956 grad, played on the baseball team but says he wasn’t in the starting lineup very often, which may account for his not being able to remember that Laconia defeated Keene 5-4 to win the Class L baseball title that year.

Now a resident of Eliot, Maine, he brought along a 1964 Ford Mustang to the reunion, one of only 14 models that still exist and which he bought at Irwin Motors for about $3,300 that year.

"It’s probably the only original owner 1964 Mustang in all of New England,’’ said Ayre.

CAPTIONS FOR ATTACHED PHOTOS

Bruce Papps of the Laconia High School Class of 1956 shows his hand with lost fingertips in an industrial mishap to Penny Pitou as teammate Chuck Clark looks on at the 55th class reunion held at Lochmere Country Club in Tilton Saturday. (Roger Amsden Photo for the Laconia Daily Sun)

Members of the Laconia High School Class of 1956 met at Lochmere Country Club for their 55th class reunion Saturday. Shown above are, first row, Robert King, Judy Bean Pilliod, William Bisson, Ellen Isabelle Morin, Joyce Olson Papps, Claire Lessard Smith, Lulu Roberts Sears, Sara Sears Hanson, Penny Pitou, John Monahan, and Ron Randlett, second row, Christian Hough, John Hodgsdon, Charles Clark, Beverly Robinson Wheeler, Bruce Papps, Cecily Ballou Quimby, Sara Lee Wheeler, Dick Perley, with Irene Bass Blake, Paula Moore Ellsworth and Jim Reever at middle right as a subset of that row; third row, Walter Ayre, James Baer, Mary Jones Quintana, Patty Chandler Pratt, Dick Davis, Pat Foley Weeks, Helen King Miller, Bill Sears and Robert Smith. (Roger Amsden photo for the Laconia Daily Sun)