Barnesville High School

Class of 1977

This web site is dedicated to all classmates of the Barnesville High School Class of 1977, who started Kindergarten and graduated from high school together and all of those we went to school with in-between, especially those classmates who are no longer with us, but always will be in spirit.

Introduction

"A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen."

This website will hopefully serve as a little testament to our class and give a little insight into the Barnesville where we grew up. When we started Kindergarten in the fall of 1964, we were 108 five year olds, split into three classes and Barnesville was a lot different than the one we graduated in 13 years later.

Barnesville, in 1964, was a bustling place, but your parents didn't worry about you being out after dark and ending up on the side of a milk carton. There were more grocery stores (granted, they weren't supermarkets) than gas stations in town. You could go to the M & K at the corner of Church and Chestnut, which had the little kids grocery carts, or stop at the A & P in the center of town. The IGA on the east end of town was an open field and the city limits ended at Pine Lane.

There were three car dealerships in town, you could get a Chevy at Shepperd's on South Chestnut, a Ford at what would become Doan's on North Chestnut, and a Chrysler product from Kinney Motors on Gardner, with East End Motors just outside of town on East Main. Foreign cars were unheard of, except for the occasional Volkswagen. By 1964, passenger trains had quit stopping in Barnesville, but the freight trains still came through on regular basis, including the one at 10 PM whose whistle you could hear all over town. There were also the Lake Shore buses, stopping at the Graves Hotel on E. Church St., twice a day, going to and from Wheeling.

The anticipated joys of Christmas and the plethora of toys that would be in Moore's Toyland, GC Murphy's and Polen's Store, all on Main St., all open both Friday and Saturday night until 9 PM, were things to look forward to for months! There was no mall at St. Clairsville that was farmland and would be for 12 more years. A shopping trip to downtown Wheeling or Cambridge was a special treat. Both Columbus and Pittsburgh in the days of a still partially completed interstate highway were practically overnight trips; so most shopping was done in Barnesville's stores.

We went to school for those first six years in a facility where kindergarteners were on the west end and seniors on the east end. There were two ironies in this, the first was that the high school gymnasium and attached music rooms were 10 years old when we started kindergarten, and were less than 6 years from being handed down to us as junior high students, as if they were old basketball or band uniforms. The other was that due to the severe winter weather our senior year we were once again kindergarteners through seniors all in one building though only in split shifts.

We saw lot in our thirteen years and I hope you enjoy surfing around this web site. As with most stories, the best place to start is the beginning, but feel free to surf anywhere and le t me know if there are any problems or any thing you would like to share.

Grade School

Junior High School

High School

Twenty-Five Year Reunion News

Our 25/26 year reunion will be on Saturday, June 28, 2003. It will be a joint effort between our class and the Class of 1978. It will be held at the Jim Jones residence in Tacoma. I will update this web site with more details as they become available. Information will be mailed out in the near future.

Click on the sign and send the webmaster any suggestions, comments or just say hi...

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Beth Bangs, Lou Cheffy, Teresa Gallagher, Tom Miller and Mary Ann Semigel. Without their help and especially Mary Ann's Senrabs, this web site would not be possible. Thanks again.

Your webmaster,

Malcolm

 ALMA MATER

To Barnesville High, We raise our song fair high school on the hill

The scene that sets our soul on fire and makes our senses thrill

To BHS, our BHS, it makes our voices swell

To scenes of happy high school days and the home we love so well

Legal Disclaimer

This site is not affiliated in any way with the Barnesville Exempted Village Schools District, the Village of Barnesville, or any other "official" Barnesville entity or organization.

Sunday, February 16, 2003 09:01:00 PM