Edison Class of ’49 75 years of memories

They were children during the Great Depression.

World War II had just ended as they started high school.

And on Oct. 10, they gathered in the Alumni Room at Edison High School for their 75th annual reunion. They are the renowned Class of ’49.

It was a class that won two state athletic championships, football and baseball, and had many other sporting and academic honors. The football team was undefeated and gave up only one touchdown all season.

There were 365 in the graduating class at Edison in 1949, and 16 hearty souls turned out for the reunion. Twenty-two had signed up, but when you’re 93, life tends to be somewhat day-to-day.

It was the first 75-year reunion in the history of the 102-year-old high school, maybe the first 75-year high school reunion in the Twin Cities ever.

Much of it was due to the hard work and perseverance of the gathering’s organizer, Dick Anderson, and his compatriot Lowell Ludford. Anderson has kept meticulous records of the class, including a seven-page list of the deceased.

Anderson estimates there are still about 60 members of the class alive, spread out across Minnesota and the nation.

The reunion began with the alumni seated at tables with members of their families. And then the door opened and a dozen members of the Edison Alumni Band made their loud entrance and played the Edison Rouser.

The alumni sang along to “Blue, Gold, our team is bold, on the field of play.”

Lunch was provided by Marino’s Deli, which was founded by class member Vicki (Marino) Matthes, and was delivered to the tables by members of the alumni band.

Ludford read a remembrance he had written of the senior year that included such notable trivia as the reason the 1949 prom had no shortage of fresh flowers was because of a midnight raid at Sunset Memorial Cemetery, with the getaway car driven by the class president. 

Mike Iacarella, president of the Edison Sports and Community Foundation, served as the emcee and recalled what life was like in 1949, including gas at 17 cents a gallon, the beginning of the Cold War and the founding of NATO.

The event concluded with each member of the class who attended receiving a plaque with their name on it.

Donald Partridge said it was “grand to see all you guys,” and said he didn’t know that many in the class because of his schedule in 1949. “We didn’t just go to school, most of us worked after school.”

Pat (Hennen) Myklebust said, “I want to thank all of you for every kindness shown to me. I’ve forgotten many things, but not the warmth.”

Ralph Matthes, owner of Marino’s Deli and Vicki’s grandson, noted that without her, the alumni would not be eating such a delicious meal that day.

Bill Volna, who is in the Edison Hall of Fame, received his plaque and then spoke about another classmate, Jerry Peterson, who was the chief scientist at United Technologies, later Raytheon Technologies. “Jerry died recently. He was the real McCoy, he was the real scientist.” Peterson was one of three class valedictorians.

Charlie Wallace recalled his job in his senior year, making 40 cents an hour.

Joyce Abelson said, “I’m happy to be here. I’m happy to be alive.”

One classmate who had signed up but who didn’t make it was Laverne Johnson DeAngelis from New York, who had been a member of the Radio City Rockettes in her youth.

Outstanding athletes

We all think our high school class was special, one way or another, but the Edison Class of 1949 backs it up with some proof.

Ludford thinks it was the closeness of the class that made it special.

“We came from different schools but we got to know each other. We became companions, we walked together, played together, melded together. We were friends.”

Anderson thinks it partly was the athletics that made the Class of ’49 stand out. The school won the state football title that year. There were no state tournaments in those days, but the football team went 8-0, only allowing one touchdown in the entire season, and, he points out, that was because Edison was using substitutes late in a blowout game.

All the teams did well. The baseball team traveled to Wade Stadium in Duluth and won the state title with a 15-2 record. The basketball team 6-3. The girl’s golf team, the only varsity women’s sport, also won the state title.

“You’ve got to remember there was very little television then,” Anderson said. “We played in the parks. We spent most of our time outside. Even in the winter, a lot of us were skating.”

Anderson and Ludford had different experiences in high school. Anderson was an athlete and Ludford worked on the school newspaper, The Record, and even won a statewide award for his sports reporting.

Each was asked about their favorite teacher. Anderson picked Pete Guzy, the legendary sports coach and phy ed teacher. Ludford picked Louise Miller, who taught an experimental family living course.

“She even taught a little about sex. If the school board knew was she was teaching, they would have fired her.”

Both said the homecoming was a major event, with the dance held in the girl’s gymnasium.

The class of 1949 was in between wars. World War II had ended four years earlier and the Korean War was a year off. The Cold War had started the year before.

“But the boys still had to think about the draft when the Korean War started.” Anderson went in the Coast Guard and Ludford joined the National Guard. 

Radio and typing classes

The 1949 yearbook showed off its modernity by featuring a jet fighter aircraft in its opening artwork. 

The class managed to raise $8,000, a large sum in those days, to create the Little Theater on the second floor of the high school, a memorial to the 116 World War II soldiers who had died. The theater was host to thousands of events over the years, but was removed when the school went through a remodeling some years ago.

The high school in 1949 was served by only one school bus which made its daily rounds through St. Anthony and New Brighton. Everyone else walked.

There was a class that taught kids how to do a radio show, and the typing class was jammed with young women hoping to parlay typing skills into a job in a world where women’s choices were still limited.

The yearbook proclaimed, “Never before have Edison students better equipped and prepared for the world than those in the 1949 class. It is with these students that progress of the future lies.”

Class member Jeanne Traun was chosen Miss Minnesota three years later and participated in the Miss America Contest. She was part of the Shiek’s Singing Sextet.

High school hi jinks

Lowell Ludford’s trip down memory lane at the reunion included these reflections:

•High society was the Central Avenue Café where the girls wore ankle-length skirts and the boys wore double-breasted suits.

•At the Twin City Championship football game against Mechanic Arts of St. Paul, Frank Rog caught the winning touchdown pass. “He bent over backward, stuck out his hand, pushed the ball up, caught it again, bobbled it some more and then tucked it under his arm before stumbling into the end zone. Somebody said he was still suffering from the night before when he ate 19 hamburgers at Chet Mady’s Hamburger Haven.”

•Captain of the ski team Jim Ford would show off by going down the old Glenwood ski jump backwards. And then he’d top that trick by going down backwards on one ski, turning around in mid-air, and landing upright.

•All year, Ludford said, the class was “badgered about our poor behavior in those dull assemblies. Finally, the second assembly was canceled when we laughed at a finger gesture made during the singing of a sacred song.”

•The gloomy basement lunchroom had the boys on one side the girls on the other with a “no man’s land” in the middle. The Inventor’s Club installed a jukebox in the lunch room so the students would have music to eat by.

•The senior prom was held at the Leamington Hotel, with tickets at $2 per couple.

•Graduation night was in the school auditorium where bleachers had been erected to seat the entire class of 365 students “packed together like sardines.” Ludford said the heat outside and the “glare of a thousand hot stage lights” baked the students in their heavy blue graduation gowns. “We thought we were going to be cooked alive.” All went smoothly until someone dropped a whiskey flask on the stage floor.