Judith Thompson Witmer

The English Students of B-1 Judith Thompson Witmer

This work is a celebration of all Baby Boomers, those who were members of the Classes that were graduated from Lower Dauphin High School in the 1960s, and, especially to a specific class in a distinctive high school. The Class of 1965 was not only a singular sensation in and of itself, but was in a very special place which in many ways seems to have been built especially for the Boomers, providing just the nurturing they needed to come of age.

The "English Students" describe themselves as ..".the generation who grew up with television. We grieved the death of President Kennedy. We eventually went to war against North Viet Nam. We were raised to have opinions and we let them be known. We had the draft and the lottery numbers--but they were for military duty and not for professional sports or fortune. We fell in love, drove too fast, and danced the night away--yet had our school work ready for the next day.

We were described by Time magazine in 1965 as being "on the fringe of a golden era of introspection with a fixation on self... said to be idealists, and later in life surprising even themselves.

In high school we discovered that B-1 was not just a room. It was a different universe. B-1 was home base. It was social, academic, personal, a place to return to in order to get one's balance and begin again; a place of primary concern for school work like studying, tests, and grades; a place for shaping relationships between student and teacher; where the training of our minds was implicit and where academic rigor was demanded; where human kindness and respect flourished."