Throwback Thursday: Pages From An Old Windsor Locks HS Yearbook

WINDSOR LOCKS, CT — This new periodic feature on Windsor Locks-East Windsor Patch will run under various titles, including Time Machine Tuesday, Wayback Wednesday and Flashback Friday, depending naturally on its day of publication. The common theme is that each will contain pages from a Windsor Locks or East Windsor high school yearbook of the past.

The Windsor Locks Library had many historical yearbooks, called the Herald, digitized for those alumni that may have lost theirs, for readers' enjoyment and as part of its efforts to preserve the town's documents for future generations. We graciously thank them for allowing Patch to reprint some of those pages.

For our initial offering, we go all the way back to pages 18 and 19 of the 1970 edition of the Herald. Depicted are faculty and staff members of the social studies, physical education and nursing departments, as well as the custodial and cafeteria staff.

Granted, this was 55 years ago, but I can't let these go without some editorial comment. First of all, the fashions, or more accurately, lack thereof. Quite a variety here, especially the neckwear. Brian McKeown's tie is thin enough to qualify him for the Secret Service, and could also have been used as a shoelace, while John Maxwell's tie is wide enough to double as a surfboard.

In the background of the Dorothy Mikolajcik photo, someone is wearing a jacket or sweater which makes it obvious that some cheap motel on Route 75 is missing a shower curtain. James McKenna is dressed in the stereotypical P.E. teacher look of the '50s and '60s: gray T-shirt tucked into sweatpants with a belt, whistle, hairy arms and 5 o'clock shadow.

One thing struck me as odd, and made me look at other pages and saw the same pattern which made me think this was 1870 instead of 1970: female teachers and staff members who were married are listed by their husband's name (Mrs. Robert Dowd, Mrs. John Carnevale, Mrs. William Cooper, etc.). Even the cafeteria director, Mrs. Laroy Brown - I wonder if she was bad, bad.

All digitized Windsor Locks yearbooks, dating as far back as 1918, may be found at archive.org.