Shared memories of simpler times sustain strong ties for North Huntingdon's final Class of '58

Some guys ventured out for late-night drag racing while the girls stayed inside for pajama parties.

On Friday nights, nearly everybody turned out for the North Huntingdon High School Bulldogs football game, followed by a sock hop in the gym.

“It was a fun time,” said Alice Goodlin. “We didn’t think about all the bad things out there. We had no problem with drugs or anything like that.”

The year was 1958, when Goodlin, now of Van Buren, Ark., served as treasurer for the last class to graduate from North Huntingdon. The next year, the school’s name changed, as the township educational system merged with that of neighboring Irwin to create today’s Norwin School District.

Other dramatic changes — in technology, teen lifestyles and world events — were just around the corner, during the turbulent 1960s. But, for Goodlin and her more than 150 classmates, their high school years remained a relatively innocent time, when they were just beginning to test the limits of parental and school rules.

Nancy Lain of Micco, Fla., was one of 37 North Huntingdon classmates and guests who gathered recently for their 65th reunion at Ferrante’s Lakeview restaurant in Hempfield.

During high school, she resisted some of the boundaries that were in place, but she ended up paying a price.

“We weren’t drinkers and we didn’t smoke,” she said of her group of school friends. But, she admitted, “We got into a lot of mischief.”

One of Lain’s infractions was breaking the school dress code, when she joined a group of girls who decided to wear kilt-type skirts to class.

“That was the fad in college, so I wore one,” she said. “We had knee socks on, but our skirts were above our knees. We showed an obscene amount of flesh, so we got kicked out for the day.”

Lain suffered a more serious outcome — a broken collarbone — when she disobeyed her parents to take part in a school “snake parade.”

This event was a pep-style procession through town that ended at a playground, where a bonfire was lit to fire up the student body for an upcoming football contest.

“We started at the high school parking lot, and you would join hands and start walking, but then it turned into running,” said Patricia Simmers of North Huntingdon, who organized the class reunion and was editor of the high school newspaper, The Hi-Lites. “That’s where Nancy broke her collarbone.”

“You’d be on the end of the line, and somebody would let go, and we’d go flying,” said Lain.

“My parents didn’t allow me to go,” Lain said. Instead of fessing up directly to them, she said, “My uncle was a doctor, and I went to him. I had to wear a brace. It was awful.”

Members of the Class of 1958 grew up during the first decade of the Cold War, marked by a nuclear arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Lain and her classmates were among the generations of kids who completed “duck-and-cover” drills at school, which offered the minimum of protection in the event of a nuclear attack.

But, she said, the students were more interested in school sports rivalries than paying attention to global political strife.

Jeannette was North Huntingdon’s chief football nemesis when Simmers was a cheerleader, Lain was a majorette and Hempfield resident John Shasko played for the Bulldogs.

Shasko recalled playing against Dick Hoak, who went on to a long career as a Steelers running back and coach after graduating from Jeannette in 1957.

“I was punting the ball, and he came in and hit me,” Shasko said. “Every once in a while, we’ll see each other and we always acknowledge each other.”

Shasko continued playing football in college, earning a scholarship to Youngstown State University after a brief stint at Reedley College in California.

“I broke my jaw playing football two years in a row,” he said, including a bizarre play where an opponent somersaulted and caught Shasko with his knee.

More recently, he’s spent time on golf courses, including Hannastown Golf Club in Hempfield.

Through his interest in that sport and his travels as a regional sales representative for Florida-based Landstar trucking company, Shasko has met such famous folks as Pirates baseball great Bill Mazeroski and the late golfing legend Arnold Palmer and singer Tony Bennett.

“I was lucky to meet some great people,” Shasko said.

Horsepower of the four-wheeled kind fascinated other classmates, including Dick Ocker, who now lives in Youngstown, Ohio.

During his high school years, he had the use of his family’s 1954 Ford Mainline, a high-performance model that the Ockers purchased at auction after it was retired as his older brother-in-law’s state trooper vehicle in Virginia.

Unbeknownst to his parents, the car’s modifications made it well-suited for Ocker’s occasional forays into nighttime drag racing on local roads. Those souped-up features included a rear-end drive with a 4.11 gear ratio, providing faster acceleration than a car with a 3.73 ratio.

Also, Ocker said, “I learned how to double-clutch from an article in Road & Track magazine. I was the only person in town who could shift down into first gear while the car was moving. I could take off in first gear; everybody else had to take off in second gear.

“I never had a wreck, I never had a problem.”

But he did have to give way to a drag rival to avoid a potential crash.

That was when he raced with a well-heeled challenger whose parents had provided him a car with an automatic transmission.

“He got the jump on me because of his automatic transmission,” said Ocker. But, “I caught him in third gear with that 4.11 rear end.

“We were going side by side down a two-lane road. Then a car showed up coming the other way. We both jumped on the brakes at the same time, and we were still side by side. Finally, I dropped in behind him.”

Racing days are long over for Ocker, who took on a civilian job as a steel mill foreman after a stint as a Naval officer.

He believes a true appreciation of fast cars may be fading among many of today’s youth, at least in his neck of the woods. “They ride the bus,” he said.

Cars are just one of the modes of transportation that have seen big leaps in technology and design since 1958. Class President Byron Singer was part of that evolution.

Now living near Phoenix, Ariz., Singer worked for General Motors for 40 years in Milwaukee, after he earned a degree in physics at Washington & Jefferson College.

“I worked on automotive electronics, but my primary job in the early days was with avionics and navigation systems,” he said. “It was involved with the 747 navigation system. It was pretty exciting.”

While the high school reunion gave Singer a chance to pause and reflect fondly on the past he shares with his classmates, he remains excited about recent advances in science and what may come next.

“The things that are going on in the world today just boggle my mind,” he said.

He expressed awe at the images of the distant universe that have been revealed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

“That is unbelievable what it’s doing,” he said. “It speaks so much for our technology.”