CHS Class of '37: 80 years of memories

CHAMBERSBURG - The year was 1937, and 185 seniors were graduating from Chambersburg High School on a May evening. On a recent sunny May afternoon 80 years later, five of those seniors gathered at a local nursing home to celebrate their class reunion.

Gas was cheap in 1937, and would remain cheap for a few more decades. One graduate remembers making $5 a week at a local drug store during high school. 

Those graduating seniors had lived through the Great Depression, and World War II was still a part of their uncharted future.

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Few class members are left now, but they gathered last weekend for what will probably be one of their last class reunions.

Glen Angle, Lovetta Barnhart Carbaugh, Sylva Hartsock Hoover, Harry Oyler and Russell Rowe reminisced about their high school days and talked about the world as they knew it then.  Another classmate, Richard Hamsher, planned to attend but was too ill to make it.

Their class theme back then had been "The SS CHS37: Sailing on charted and uncharted seas."

The charted part of their journey - four years of high school - was behind them, and the uncharted part lay stretched ahead. 

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They celebrated their 80th reunion at Menno Haven's Village Square and reminisced about that uncharted voyage into the world, to college and careers, through a world war, marriage and raising families and finally, sitting in a nursing home dining room, still enjoying each others' company.

Now in their late 90s, they talked about those four years in high school and marveled at the changes they had seen in their lifetimes.

"If there is one person who has kept this class together over the years, it's Harry." Rowe said, thanking Oyler for taking on that task. 

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The Class of '37 saw changes in eight decades from cheap gas (11 gallons for a dollar, according to Rowe), to dramatic changes in technology leading into the 21st century.

Rowe remembered applying for a job at Horner's Drug Store while in high school, being hired and making $5 a week for about 30 hours of work.

Rowe told how he once rode his bicycle to Atlantic City and back.

"Janet Orr was going with her family to Atlantic City and I had a week off, so I decided to go to myself," he said. 

He started off on a Saturday at midnight. It took him 22 hours to get there, biking the entire 220 miles, averaging 10 miles an hour.  

When he got to the hotel where he planned to stay in Atlantic City, he said, "I couldn't go up the stairs - my legs were so stiff. The clerk helped me up step by step." Then he slept  for 24 hours.

Angle, who opened a garage in 1948, said a 10-cent-a-gallon special on gas for that grand opening brought so many people out that police had to handle the traffic.

"People brought 55-gallon drums and filled them with gasoline," he remembered.

Rowe remembered getting ready to enter Chambersburg High School his freshman year in 1932.

"A couple of days before school started, I went to the high school and looked at the building, and I was afraid. I was really afraid," he said. "I was afraid I would get lost in the big building, and I had heard stories... about how seniors treated freshmen, and about strict teachers."

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Oyler recalled the Senior Prom, and passed around a dance program for that May 7, 1927 event.

"I danced with Giggles McGeehee, Kathy (Shafer), Mary, and the one I thought the most of, Florence Fisher," he said.

"It was one of the best times to live," Angle said of the 20th century world he and his classmates lived in at that time of their life. 

Then he added, "And probably now is one of the best times to leave." 

As for the 21st century, retirement and living into their late 90s, Rowe had this to say:

"My advice to you is, "Make a lot of trips to Vegas because you will need it."

Vicky Taylor, 717-881-5373