Junior High School

                                                          ( Baby Bulldogs)                                                          

Most of us came together for the first time in Jr. High School. For me the year was 1949 in 7th Grade. For the next six years, we would be commuting to the town of Balboa for schooling.  We came by bus from our grade schools in Ancon, Balboa, Curundu, Diablo, Pedro Miguel, Gamboa, the City of Panama and also from the Armed Forces Bases.  The school bus carried not only Jr. High School students, but also the "older" people, the High School students.  Each town had two buses. One for the boys and one for the girls. Our bus driver, throughout my bus years was "Flowers".  At Christmas we would pool our money and buy him a gift. 
                                                   

Here we were in a new town, with new children and teachers and a new school, which was quite exhilarating and/or frightening for 11 and 12 year olds. Many of us were far away from home, for the first time, and would not be home for lunch, but would leave home from early morning to late afternoon. Charlie Hummer told me that some of the Ancon boys rode their bicycles to school and went home for lunch. Then there would be new things we would be doing at this school. We were assigned "lockers" and told to bring a combination lock to school. We had to memorize our combinations. We'd put the books we weren't using,for that part of the day, in along with our lunches or any other odds and ends.  At first it was intimidating, because I'd worry about forgetting the combination. Another new experience was moving from classroom to classroom!  Thank heaven for Homerooms. Many of the students in that room shared many of the other classes with us, so we moved together through a hallway of strangers.  I believe, many close friendships came from this moment, for now we were separated from the friends from home.

Our school had two floors. I remember our Study Hall was in the downstairs back room. We also ate our lunches brought from home in that room. As the year went on, more of us ventured to the Clubhouse to augment our lunches with desserts. They sold the most delicious Lemon Meringue Pie.  I remember the magazine area, which sold piano sheet music at the Clubhouse. We would also visit the Balboa Commissary which carried more merchandise than our small town commissaries.  Sometimes we would go into the old (two story) gymnasium and "hang around".  Once we had a lady, Delfina, that would play the piano for us at lunch in the gym. We would all gather around and sing and have fun. Anne Magee tells me the black lady's name was Delfina Williams, who also played for Anne's dance teacher. Doug Schmidt writes, that some of the boys went to the Balboa train station to buy RC Colas to drink with their lunch. As 7th and 8th Graders, my friends and I explored this new town on our lunch hour.

                                              Balboa Train Station

                                 
                                                                                                          Picture by T.A. Stepp seen at http://www.chagres.com/

For a time there we climbed up to the Administration building and came sliding down the side hill!  Yes, we girls wore dresses. By the time they allowed us to wear "dungarees" (but only on Fridays) we were much too old for those childish things.

Now we were made aware of time. We had to be back to school and be in our Homerooms, when the doors were opened and the bell rang for the afternoon session. When we left the school at lunch time, we could not get back in unless somebody opened the door from the inside.  I know the doors were locked and the lunch room was eventually cleared of students. We would all gather outside the front or back door, after our lunch adventure, to wait for the doors to be opened. Also during lunch certain times of the year, vendors would come in front of the school to sell us ginnups (a small fruit that has a crisp shell).  You cracked the shell and sucked on the pulp. The Ginnup has a large pit. They  were sold in small brown paper bags.

I recall an English teacher, Miss Holley, who was Southern and had an accent so thick, that we had her spelling the words on our first spelling test!?  She had very red hair and was young. In that class, I remember Greta Navarro and Julio Wright. The teachers would stand outside their classrooms, next to their doors, between classes. They would step into their classrooms when the bell rang. One time we rearranged the desks in Miss Holley's class. When she sat at her desk and looked up, our backs were to her.  Which brings me to another memory...we were not sitting at desks with tops that lifted, or had holes in the corner for ink wells and bench chairs attached to it.  No, now we sat in chairs with an arm that widened out for us to do our work!  It makes me wonder how left-handed people managed that arrangement.  Oops, forgot. No left-handed school children.  They were taught to use their right hand for school work.  Back to the new desk set up.  Under the chair was a shelf to place our other books and school supply not being stored in our lockers. The chair and arm were wood, the shelf was institutional metal.

Another memory was writing "slam books".  I think they are not allowed today and thinking about them, I can see why.  You would fold a page down the middle, bending it backwards. You would fill the lines on that half page with titles like; name, height, color eyes, favorite song, favorite color, favorite person, etc., etc., etc.  You would also have negative categories of things and people you didn't like.  Your friends could read the categories and fill in the following page and you would fold that page down the middle and fold forward hiding their answers from others.  Toward the back you just put a persons name on the page and people would write their like or dislike of them. Therefore, a "slam book".

                                                 Balboa Jr High

Picture from www.czbrats.com/album/czschool.htm

Francis A. Castles our Principal

"The school was wood, two stories, with four (or was it three?) rooms
on each side of a central walkway on each floor -- stairs at each end.
Mr Castles' tiny office had room only for his desk, a secretary's desk
& a waiting chair.  Yes, I was called in there once -- or was it
twice?

Mrs Campbell was my 7th grade home room teacher & her room was wall to
wall with Mr Castles' office near the front.  Don't remember the next
room but the last room on the end was Mr Ledger's (so handsome) whose
room was wall to wall with the Girls' Room.  Don't remember where the
Boys' Room was --maybe overhead on the second floor (to connect the
plumbing).

My 8th grade home room teacher was Doris Holley, who also was the
sponsor for the school newspaper (the Fledgling -- so named because
the high school paper was the Parrakeet).  She took us on a field trip
to the Panama American newspaper printing plant in Panama City, then
to lunch at El Rancho where we were served salad & asked what the meat
was -- clearly chicken, we said.  "No", she replied: "Iguana."   Well,
OK -- delicious, which is why the animal is on the endangered list in
Panama."
Contributed by Nina Brown Kosik

Click on picture to see   enlargement.  *        Names below

Click on picture to see enlargement.  *Names below

We had our own newspaper...The Fledgling to signify we
were young compared to our High School friend, the Parakeet!
Even though this particular newspaper was printed when we had just entered High School, I have
used it.  The headlines is about our own Lee Rigby class of '55!

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Junior High Dance

Physical Education was another revelation. Where before in Grade School we just had recess now we had uniforms and regulated activities. The girls will recall the "bloomer" type outfits made of an awful gray material. They were definitely hand-me-downs.  Some were missing buttons (they buttoned up the side) and sometimes the elastic on the pants went....Do you recall the name of the nice little lady that handed us our baskets, from behind the "cage", with our uniforms and sneakers?*  How about the canvas cubicles we changed our clothes in or the shower stalls they expected us to wash up in after walking through the footbath of "yucky" chlorine water?  "No shower caps, no hair dryers, NO WAY!"   Most of us passed up that luxury.  Another class in physical education was swimming.  Most of us loved to swim but at this time it was not our favorite sport. Again the hair problem. After swimming, most of us ran around with wet hair soaking the backs of our collars, (same complaint as above, plus we wouldn't wear swimming caps)!  You could only hope that you would get that class toward the end of the day.This then were some of our Gym activities along with softball,volleyball,basketball and archery.  As most my classmates will tell you, I was almost always chosen last by the team leader!

These are some memories of Jr. High School.  I hope to add more (maybe from the male point of view) in the future.

                                                                                                    
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Yes we had a graduation exercise!

                 
                                                           Contributed by Marge Zent Howard                             

*The lady who handed out the  wire basket in the girls' gym dressing room was Lily Burgess...
Contributed by Nina Kosik via Tommy Ford via
Julee Ford...Thank you!