Apr. 20—WILKES-BARRE — This week, I hopped in the Way Back Machine and traveled back to 1968 and it made me realize what a significant year that was in American and world history.
In 1968, the country and the world were undergoing historic changes.
—The Vietnam War was at its peak.
—Two great leaders — Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. — were assassinated.
—Student protests on college campuses were violent.
—President Lyndon Johnson said he had enough and declined to run for re-election.
And here in Luzerne County, a new school district was forming on the west side of the Susquehanna River — Wyoming Valley West began in 1966-67 with the merger of many schools into a single district whose students initially attended three high schools — Kingston Area, Forty Fort Area and Plymouth Area — but they graduated from WVW.
In 1967-68, the district sent all students to a single high school in Kingston — there were 692 students in the senior class — I was one of them.
All these years later and still many of us from the WVW Class of ’68 have never met — having passed through the high school building’s crowded halls as strangers. We really don’t know much about each other.
As adults, we are surprised sometimes to learn we attended high school with someone we know well today, but didn’t know back then.
That first year was an adjustment, to say the least. In a move known as “jointure,” officials lumped into one place students from many municipalities: Kingston, Plymouth, Forty Fort, Swoyersville, Larksville, Courtdale, Pringle, Edwardsville and Luzerne.
Rather than walk to school — and home for lunch — we rode school buses. We had classes with high school teachers we had never seen before. We lost coveted spots on athletic teams — thereby losing our status as “big men” and “big women” on campus. Scholarships are never offered to intramural stars.
School spirit — ever-present in high schools of the ’60s — was minimal at Valley West in that first year especially. The burgundy-and-gold uniforms just didn’t look right. We could no longer yell, “Shawnee Against the World,” or “Go, Huskies,” or “Sailors,” or “Flyers.” or “Green Wave” — school spirit ebbed to the sea of jointure.
But hey, we were just kids. Before Valley West was established, we all looked forward to school each September, to renewing friendships that were interrupted by summer vacation. But even while we were out of school, we were in the same town. We still saw each other, hung out and sometimes played on the same summer sports teams.
In 1967-68, it all changed for us. It’s not that the jointure was bad — it probably had to be done. But building the district’s current, enormous white school in the late 1970s right in the middle of my hometown, Plymouth — on the site where we all had played Little League games — maybe wasn’t the best decision.
Growing up in the 1960s was difficult enough. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968, Vietnam War protesters clashed with Chicago police. Two months later, Republican Richard Nixon was elected president.
Then the major changes came. The music changed, the fashion changed, morals were being challenged, as were authority and family values. The nuclear family was beginning to disappear. Moms were joining dads in the workplace. Two cars were parked out front, and dinner at 5 p.m. with the family was being substituted for take-out and fast-food mania.
All of this and a new school system to cope with — how could we survive?
Well, we did. High school antics and friendships last only a brief time, but their memories endure. The WVW Class of 1968 was a diverse group that came together forcibly, but is connected forever. Even though we might not have gotten to know each other as well as we would have liked, we share a common thread. Many of us have achieved varying degrees of success. I guess, in a way, the jointure did work.
It was good to travel back in time to recall how it was before everything changed.
It’s always good to go home again.
Reach Bill O’Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.