A tribute to a great school

One of the earliest memories my older siblings and I have is getting piled into the family Chevy on a Sunday afternoon by our father. These trips had a dual purpose. The first was to give my mother a brief break from looking after five young children all at once; the second was to explore parts of Seaford and other local communities with interesting attractions. I recall at least a few trips in the early 1960s that involved visiting the construction site of the new school that was being built on Sunset Avenue. We all knew that someday in the distant future (who knew what seventh grade was?) we would all be walking the halls of that school, the future Seaford Junior High School.

I recall as a seventh grader in September of 1973, the school was very different from what I was used to. My elementary school, the Seaford Avenue School, graduated only two classes of sixth graders the June before. Those 50 or so students knew each other well and did not know exactly what to expect when we joined more than 250 additional classmates from the Harbor and Manor schools. Our school was small, calm and familiar. We walked to and from school and went home for lunch if our parents signed off for that. Bus rides, lockers, new classmates and unfamiliar teachers were all part of the coming Junior High experience.

My three junior high school years were memorable and took place during some of the more troubled times for our country. The end of the tumultuous Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal which toppled the Nixon presidency, out of control inflation, and an energy crisis which led the district to turn on only every other hallway bank of lights, are but a few of the challenges faced by the country which impacted the national consciousness.