I'd know those legs anywhere

When my husband was a teenager, he ran cross country and lettered (block T) at Arsenal Technical High School, a huge school in Indianapolis larger than the town where I grew up. Today we were looking for a classmate in the 1956 Cannon (no index) and I came across this photograph, with an incorrect caption. The book says it is the football eleven, but I noticed these guys weren't the football team and there sure were more than eleven. Then my eye fell on the guy in the foreground (#2), and I just knew it was my husband. You just never forget legs like that! Nowadays he's just a skinny guy who leads a bunch of ladies in an exercise class, but back then. . .

I can get a bit envious when I leaf through his yearbooks. I had fine teachers and a new high school building (the town no longer has a high school), but then I look at the opportunities Tech kids had (in addition to a wide range of sports): service clubs, Future Nurses Club, Chemistry Club, Music Club, Nature Study Club, Drama Club, Future Teachers of America Club, Radio Club, Square Dance Club, German Club, Art Club, Home Economics Club, XYZ Club (no idea what this was, but it was very large), ROTC, all sorts of musical groups which included a string quintet, concert band, dance band, brass ensemble, madrigal singers, boys octette, concert orchestra, woodwind ensemble and to top it all off, they even got to play Christmas music! Tech had 48 people on its cafeteria staff, a staffed bookstore, and 47 people on the custodial staff including 7 engineers! A display of "The American Way of Life" in October 1956 in one of Tech's main buildings drew 9,000 visitors. Would teenagers today even be allowed to host such a patriotic display? They had 140 different courses in Shop and a class in Stagecraft that built the downtown Christmas display on Monument Circle. Tech had classes in intelligent voting (although voting age then was 21), posture, recognizing marijuana and other drugs, and keeping their campus and property clean. I don't think I ever thought about that in high school.

One of my favorite things to read in my husband's yearbook is the full page note from his girlfriend. She too knew a good man, but she lost.