Our Lee Memories Showcase
Try to Remember
by Mike Hoyt
January 10, 2024
A couple of years, three to be exact, after we left Lee High School, in 1965 the Brothers Four recorded a nostalgic melody entitled “Try to Remember.” Take a moment and listen to it (click on the link). It’ll take you back to a time and to a place in our lives that are hard to forget and certainly worth revisiting every now and then.
Each September, when the days of summer lingered and our hopes turned toward fall, we’d put on our back-to-school best, shine our Weejuns, and return to McDuff Avenue to the grand old yellow brick building that welcomed us home once again.
We all had mixed feelings on those days. Labs and homework and garden club lay ahead. But, so did pep rallies, football games, sock hops, and variety shows in the auditorium. We’d read The Traveler, leave notes in each other’s lockers, swap homework assignments, talk about our dates for the weekend, gather at the Lee High Shop for a giant fruity drink and a round of gossip, endure another marching band practice, and watch films of the Miami High football team we’d play next week.
September was a time when we’d look toward new beginnings, confront new challenges, discover new romances, and somehow take up where we’d left off. Our lives were driven by orderly disorder: The bell would ring and we’d make our way through the crowded hallways and up staircases with a quick stop at our lockers, then on to class and a dreaded pop quiz.
At some point during those days that seemed to last forever, we’d wander by the old, dusty glass case in the front hall near the main entrance that nobody used. You know, the one in front of Warren Kirkham’s, John Prom’s, and Virgie Cone’s offices. Inside this mausoleum-like enclosure were treasures of times past at Lee High School. Sports trophies, yellowed photos, plaques of various kinds, a basketball net or two, a now-deflated football inscribed with “1946 Lee 53 - Jackson 13.”
This revered old case was a combination museum and time capsule, full of memories and curiosities of every description. All were kept locked away and were mostly unnoticed by us students who had much more important things on our minds, like who to ask to the prom.
When you think about it, many of us have long-forgotten Lee memorabilia tucked away on a closet shelf or in a bottom drawer or in a cardboard box in the attic. An old letter sweater. A few wrinkled photos. A faded football program. Your cheerleader outfit. Your old baseball glove. A weathered basketball. Old test papers. Issues of The Traveler. Some 45 rpm records from the ’60’s. Maybe an old report card or a now-ratty pom-pom. You know you have something from those golden days.
So, now here’s a chance to share some of these memories with your classmates in what will, in effect, be Our Lee Memories Showcase. Think of it as a kind of virtual online trophy case that’ll have a regular spot here on our class website. It’s not the front hall, but it’s the best we can do.
So, send in your photos of your favorite, most treasured Lee memorabilia. Almost anything goes. Please send them to tmseale@mac.com.
This’ll be fun and nostalgic, a happy trip down this rich memory lane that the Lee Class of ’62 has created. We look forward to hearing from you and we’ll meet at The Trophy Case!
1962 Blue and Gray Calendar
Biddie Black and Bill Schmidt
Mel Fannin
March 20, 2024
Here’s one for the trophy case, our early band, played Cupid Capers I believe 1961, Dave Crawford drums, Howard Hanger piano, Tim Ford guitar and me on sax. We played together through the early 70’s with the exception of Howard who went on to become a pastor and wrote a famous children’s song “I Wanna Have Dog Breath” Click on the link to hear.
Wow, if we’d had that song back then we could have been on Ed Sullivan!