The last class

1956 graduates of St. Peter High School gather for 60th reunion

Francis Hake, left, and Ray Hentges, right, were among the attendees at the St. Peter High School 60th anniversary reunion over the weekend. After Friday and Saturday activities, 14 members of the group finished the reunion with breakfast Sunday morning at Capitol Plaza Hotel.
Francis Hake, left, and Ray Hentges, right, were among the attendees at the St. Peter High School 60th anniversary reunion over the weekend. After Friday and Saturday activities, 14 members of the group finished the reunion with breakfast Sunday morning at Capitol Plaza Hotel.

 

It was the year Elvis Presley released "Heartbreak Hotel," the first of his 170 hit singles. Boxer Rocky Marciano retired as the undefeated heavyweight champion and "Guys and Dolls" was a hit on the big screen.

The year was 1956. In Jefferson City, the graduating class at St. Peter High School would be the last before a new high school, named after Jesuit missionary Ferdinand Helias, would open in the fall.

Sixty years later, as members of the class reach the average life expectancy rate, 50 of the 89 graduates survive. (One technically didn't graduate, but they still count him as their own.)

Over the weekend, 29 class members and their spouses gathered for their 60th reunion, reminiscing of days gone by.

The class members may have slowed down from when they graduated in 1956, but they're all still active.

"Nobody at this table is retired. We're all doing something," Pete Hartman said. He and high school classmate Francis Hake still volunteer at Helias once a week, performing maintenance work and other odd jobs.

Things were different when they went to school.

For one, the girls and boys were separated by floors in the school, which was located on the grounds of the current St. Peter School and church. The boys and girls were taught by different religious orders.

Ray Hentges credits the Christian Brothers, the religious order that taught the boys, for steering him away from accounting and toward coaching and teaching. He went on to coach the Helias football team for 33 years before retiring in 1998.

"I think the Christian Brothers were the most influential people in my life," he said at a Sunday reunion breakfast at Capitol Plaza Hotel. "They taught us so much about life."

Most of the graduates recalled similar good memories from high school.

Hartman, however, recalls the Christian Brothers giving him a hard time. He thinks they had it out for the country boys like him, who sometimes showed up for class with cow patties stuck to the bottom of his shoes.

But school didn't excuse work on the farm. "By the time we got to school, we had milked 10 or 20 cows," he said.

"Graduating from high school was the best day of my life," he said. Joking with his wife, Lillian, he motioned to her and said: "She was the second best."

"I loved the nuns at St. Peter, but the brothers I could do without," he added.

Hartman went on to have a stellar career with the Missouri National Guard, retiring as a sergeant major.

Other class members are accomplished in their own right. One of them, Myrtle McMichael, is a Holts Summit resident and is currently a successful songwriter. She recently went to Branson to be honored with an award.

Ann (Blaser) Noe said her class was supposed to move to Helias for their senior year, but a construction delay kept them at St. Peter High School for their final year.

She said she recalled getting into trouble for talking early in her academic career. "In first grade, Sister Ann called my mother and said, 'I don't know what we're going to do with her.'"

By high school, she had settled down. She recalls celebrating homecoming and other occasions by joining hands with classmates and doing the "snake dance" downtown. Dozens of students in the school would wind their dance through downtown stores, where shopkeepers welcomed them.

Uniforms were required, with boys wearing button-down shirts and ties and the girls had navy blue skirt and white blouses.

"The only excuse for not having your uniform on was having it at the cleaners," Noe said. "And you would be surprised how often uniforms were being cleaned."