MEMORIAL DAY: CHS '51 MEMBERS SPEAK

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"CLOVIS WILL ALWAYS BE A PART OF US, AND EACH OF US A PART OF CLOVIS."
       -------Robert Stebbins
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"MEMORIES...OF A LIFETIME"
  ----by John Sieren, CHS '51

Memories are the marks on the yardstick of a lifetime,

From birth to death---the ups and downs of an earthly climb;

Retaining and recalling from the registry of the mind

Experience, events, promises, people still entwined

Preserved in a fragile cocoon, they return as an echo,

Remembrances shadowing a colorful tableau.

Some reconstructed moments are fraught with joy and delight,

While others revive bygone events filled with fear or spite.

For some, memories keep the mind alive with love and hope,

Melancholy and spiritual gloom grease the slippery slope

That marks an anthology of unraveled hopes and dreams,

Memories are based on the individual it seems.

Personalities, genetics, health, peers all display,

A cementing force on each life's memory bouquet

Where one is and who one is ranks as a memory blend

Of all the bonds and attachments sought to transcend.
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"AN EARLY SCHOOL MEMORY"
  -----by John Sieren CHS '51

"We were in the third grade when Pearl Harbor was bombed and in the sixth grade when
we were beginning to win the war. I remember, during those times that I was afraid the Japanese or Germans would come over and bomb us, and as a result, I learned the
silhouettes of all their bombers. I tried to train myself to quickly wake up in case we were invaded. We had to learn to do without items we had before the war.

We bought savings stamps that would eventually add up to a war bond. We has to save up ration stamps to get sugar and other and other rationed items. We had paper, rubber, and metal drives to collect items used to make what was needed by the war effort. It was a tense, trying time even for elementary school students, and when VE Day and VJ Day came, I remember that I had a feeling of relief---more than any other feeling."

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"WHAT MEMORIAL DAY IS ABOUT"
  ----by Robert Stebbins, CHS '51

"Memorial Day is about remembering. We remember our loved ones and others we may or may not have personally known, who have passed this way on their journey to eternity. Our departed Clovis High School classmates occupy a special place in our memories, and we give thanks for those who are still here.

Until mid-1951 we shared our adolescence, growing up in one of the best places in the world.
Upon graduation, we went our separate ways to experience new people, different places,
and more of life's adventures.

While we may not have realized it then, Clovis will always be a part of us...and each of us a
part of Clovis."
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"WHAT LAY AHEAD..."
----by Levi Brake, CHS '51

"Little did we know in 1951 what adventures and misadventures, what joys and sorrows would be ahead. But I wouldn't change any of it. Not a whit!"
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5/27/13
FOR MIL'S,
JOHN, ROBERT,
& LEVI
(MEMORIAL DAY, 2013)