The Bridgeville Area Historical Society recently received a valuable collection of memorabilia related to the Bridgeville High School class of 1946, from alumnus Paul Schmidt’s widow via fellow classmate Ed Chabala.
A very young Paul Schmidt is portrayed in a photograph on page 90 of the Society’s Images of America book, “Bridgeville”, helping his mother make apple butter in an outdoor kitchen. Paul was a member of Boy Scout Troop 245 in 1943 when I joined it, and preceded me through high school by three years.
After Paul grew up and left Bridgeville he maintained contact through his boyhood friend Ed Chabala, punctuated by frequent class reunions. Eventually Ed began mailing him copies of my “Water Under the Bridge” columns. At some point I added Paul to the mailing list for the original unedited versions of the columns. A few years ago I was saddened to learn that he had died.
Recently his widow forwarded to Ed two file folders filled with documents from Paul’s high school days. Leafing through them generates waves of nostalgia from an era seventy-five years ago.
The prize of the collection is a copy of the 1945 BHS Yearbook, a yearbook I did not know existed. We believe there were yearbooks in 1925 and 1926 and that the tradition was then suspended, with the exception of a home-made mimeographed version in 1939. Apparently the Class of 1945 elected to resurrect the tradition, and produced a handsome paperback Yearbook, called “The Bridge”.
The Yearbook was dedicated to the BHS graduates serving our country in World War II. It begins with an Honor Roll of BHS servicemen and women. Included are ten young men from the Class of 1945 who went into the service just before graduation. There are 292 men and women on the Honor Roll, including twelve who had lost their lives. The war years were difficult times for Bridgeville.
“A closet door is opened”
An eloquent statement by Dr. Colton acknowledging the debt current students owe to their predecessors is followed by three pages of photographs of the thirty members of the faculty, headed by Joseph “Pop” Ferree. There are eighty-eight Seniors pictured, including among others, Sammy David, Tom “Dreamer” Lytle, and Gerre Harmuth.
“Senior Class History”, “Class Prophecy”, and “Senior Class Will” follow; appropriate for their time, they seem trite today. There are excellent sections on the underclassmen and on the various clubs and activities. I was especially pleased with the portion covering the basketball team – my all-time favorite. Their 34 to 32 loss to Avalon in WPIAL semi-finals was a major disappointment.
The page devoted to the Junior Play that year, “Mr. and Mrs. North”, brought back many memories. Bob Rothermund had a minor part in the play, as a corpse. Early in the play a closet door is opened, exposing a corpse which then falls straight forward face down on the stage. When we asked Bob how he could pull that off, he told us to “Watch the hands!” He then demonstrated how he could cushion his fall with his hands.
The night of the play we were eager to see him pull it off. “Watch the hands!” When the door opened we were shocked to see that he had both his hands in his pockets. Not to worry, the show must go on. Bob took one for the team, smashing into the floor without a cushion. By coincidence, among the artifacts in Paul Schmidt’s collection is a photograph of Bob on the floor being examined by the doctor, played by Bill Sweeney, and the policeman, played by Benton “Red” Williams.
As is always the case, the collection of advertisements by sponsors is an excellent record of the businesses active in Bridgeville at the time. Of particular interest to me is one for the Hop Shoppe, a soft drinks night club for teenagers with dances Wednesday and Saturday evenings.
This yearbook is a valuable addition to the Society’s collection, as are three copies of the “Bridger”; November 1945, January 1946, and March 1946. A puzzling comment in one of the “Water Under the Bridge” gossip columns is “Kitch misses Don Toney an awful lot”. I must ask Don which one of his conquests was known as “Kitch”.
The March “Bridger” reported that the Class of 1946 had determined that publishing a Yearbook like the one the previous year was too expensive and that they would, instead publish an expanded “Bridger” with most of the same content. They would print two hundred copies and sell them for ninety cents a copy.
Sure enough, Paul package included a copy of the 1946 “Bridge” and it does indeed contain a large amount of relevant information. There were eighty-seven graduates in the class; for me it will always be “Rum” (Bob Rothermund) and “Slugger” (Bob Bailey)’s class, but it was filled with people important to me.
Almo Pruner was Class President; Louis “Skp” Colussy, Vice President. Helen David was Secretary; Ralph “Butch” Schneider, Treasurer. Patty Patton was Social Chairman; I recently learned from Mary Weise, another proud member of the class, that Patty died recently. In addition to Paul Schmidt and Ed Chabala, the class included Charles and Sheila Banks, Frank “Cutter” Cortazzo, Jimmy Delphus, George Deep, Norman “Nimmy” Kreiger, George “Hipper” McCoy, Carleton “Curly” McKee, Teresa Pennetti, and Alice Pesavento.
Among the photographs in Paul’s package of artifacts is a glamour shot of a beautiful young girl, seated on a stool. On the bottom of the photo someone has written Evelyn “Babe” McElhaney. I have a distinct memory of being infatuated by Evelyn McElhaney and Dorothy “Dot” DeGrosky after watching them do a dance routine “By the Sea”, dressed in Gay Nineties bathing suits, at Class Night in 1946. To a naive ninth grader, they were easily as glamorous as movie stars.
We are fortunate that the 1946 Class chose to record its history with this document. It deserves a place with the professionally produced Yearbooks that followed it.
Most classes start out with ambitious plans for reunions; this class followed through much more extensively than most. Paul’s collection included seven formal pictures of class reunions beginning with number fifteen in 1961 and ending with number fifty-five in 2001. There is also a picture of a gathering of seventeen classmates in 2011. I think Ed told me he still gets together with six of them occasionally. This collection warrants a folder of its own at the History Center. Perhaps we can persuade Ed and Mary Weise to identify the folks in some of the pictures.
We are indebted to Mrs. Schmidt and Ed Chabala for their thoughtfulness in making certain this collection of artifacts has found a home.