60's Memories

      During my three years at Dulles the football team made the playoffs every year and the basketball quintet went to state in 1964.   At that time, JFD was the largest AA school in the state, and 1964 was its last year in AA.  As the managing editor of the Viking Shield, I was privileged to be able to attend and write of the football team's many victories.  We were leading in the state finals at Baylor Stadium in Waco over Rockwall 6-0 until the final 37 seconds of the game, when a fluke pass play to Rockwall's Marc Noel yielded what was said to be a touchdown (film replays showed it wasn't).  The extra point was good, and time ran out with the score 7-6.  That was perhaps the most heartbreaking sports loss of my life, and even now over 35 years later, I replay that ersatz touchdown in my mind on every biweekly drive through Rockwall.
      In those olden days, we published the Shield as a full page once a week in the Fort Bend Mirror. With an enrollment of only about 475, and a newspaper staff of only 3 to 4 reliable contributors, news copy would occasionally be scarce and there we would sit on Thursday evening at 5 p.m. --with a 7 p.m. deadline--with up to 20 blank column inches to fill and no story.  Then it was time to be creative, and we often were, writing, typing, and proofing feature articles on students or faculty as time flew by.  Nevertheless, we always were able to successfully put the Shield to bed, although more than once in just the nick of time.
      The first fiberglass Viking mascot, then called "Leif," (I believe) was purchased through a student fundraising campaign initiated by the Shield's Editor-in-Chief, Charlotte Hancock.  The mascot, accompanied by an honor guard, traveled in a pickup truck to every football game.
      I was in Mrs. King's Civics class on Novermber 22, 1963, when Mike Munch came in and announced that JFK had been shot.   At first he wasn't believed, but the teacher used the then new telephone intercom to call the office to confirm it was true.
      The move in the autumn of '62 to the new school from the old one in Missouri City was like moving to a palace.  We thought air conditioning in the classroom to be an amazing life enhancer.  No more having the paper stick to your sweaty forearm as you took notes or responded to test questions.  The gym and PE dressing rooms were also uptown by comparison to our former digs.

      I, too, was a member of Mrs. King's Civics Class on 11/22/63 and have never been able to block the memory of the confirmation of Mike Munch's report being broadcast over the school intercom.  The other really big world event that I remember is the absolute terror I felt that we might at any moment be bombed into oblivion during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  My memories of the fateful game at Baylor Stadium against Rockwall are a bit different.   As a member of the Viking Band, we were used to playing the fight song and others throughout the game as well as marching during halftime.  The weather was so cold and wet that we had to keep our instruments in their cases for protection.  Perhaps more songs could have had a positive influence on the outcome.

      1959-1960 was a very good year for us.  Made the move from Sugar Land High School after the 1958-1959 year.  I never thought the school much less the district would get so big.  Great sports teams at our school.

     Tranferring from a large Houston school in the fall of 1964, I was a bit surprised to find Dulles High School so small in comparison to my old school.  From a distance it appeared even smaller because there were few houses and trees surrounding the campus.  It's not that way any longer.

     Johnny Harris {me} and Larry Warmke decided to get some beer and drive around Sugar Land on a Saturday night...so we get the beer and put it on ice in the back seat of my little Triumph auto and head out.
I go the bright idea of going by the policeman's {there was ony one} house to see if his patrol car was parked in his driveway.  While we were both stretching our necks to see if he was home, we hit a car in front of his house...no one was hurt so we took off and finished the brew at the football stadium.  I had to pay Justice of the Peace Gandy 25 bucks for leaving the scene and of course, pay for the other guy's car...my parents took the keys away from me.....
     We were preparing to do the Show "South Pacific " at Dulles when the music teacher asked me and Moon (Gilbert Mundkowsky, Class of '65) to go to the funeral home and bring back some of the artificial grass they use at gravesites so he could use it as part of our scenery ... Well, of course he screwed up by picking Moon and me to begin with cause it was 9:30 AM and we had no intention of coming back to school until 3:00 PM. ...  When we returned the music teacher was hot as hell and wanted to know why it took us so long to get the grass ...  Our answer: "They were using it at a funeral, so we had to wait" ...  He called the funeral director and of course we got our butts handed to us ...  Nice try I thought.

    Please share your memories with us.   Part of looking forward to the future involves remembering the past and sharing it with others.   Send your memories to webmaster@jfdullesalumni.org.