Lexington High School

Class of 1965

The Class of 1965 probably saw more windows broken than any other single class in Lexington's history. We saw a lot more than that, though. We saw the high school grow from big to huge, spreading from one building to four, with a field house in the bargain. We saw it become more of an institution and yet somehow more personal. Our senior year brought us into a new school, a school with a new legal system. Suddenly we had to separate the food waste from the paper waste -- and we didn't. We had to eat in our home units and forget where our friends were -- and we weren't about to. We dumped any trash into any barrel, wore levis and short skirts and ran the lunch blockade whenever possible. The Class of '65 may not have had much pep-pin spirit, but it had a spirit of sensible, quiet rebellion. But a school is never all rebellion. Even after that superior, bored senior feeling had set in, once in a while, as we stared out the window, something a teacher said would make all the loose ends knit together.

And then we felt a certain glow of understanding, and knew why we were here. And after the 2:20 bell, for a lot of us, there were things to do. The tinny music started in the gym, and the majorettes started twirling. The basketball team meandered towards the locker room. The senior play on a bare stage, ground through the same scene for the twelfth time. And about 4:30, we'd grumble our way home with a martyred look -- and know we'd come bouncing back the next day for more.

There was no one look for the Class of '65.There couldn't be because it was made up of 509 different people. Some wore their hair teased, some wore it long and straight. Some people used book bags and some didn't carry books at all. There were Ivy League sweater sets, and lettermen sets. Engineer boots and loafers.

We didn't leave this school as one unified group.We couldn't. We were too different. But we did leave it with something in common. We spent three years rubbing shoulders in the halls, the lunchrooms, the lavs and the locker rooms. As a group we saw the provincial conservatism of Lexington soften under the steady stream of new teachers, students and ideas. People in our class traveled half of the globe. Others found love and hate here at home. We saw death at close range: three of our classmates and a President died within a year. All these things have molded and marked us. No other school could have produced quite the same group. No other group at the same school could even be quite the same. We were the Class of '65 in Lexington, Massachusetts and no one else can ever be that again.

---- 1965 LHS Yearbook Editors