“Bay High on Parade”- 1958

Written in 2011 by Gayle Grossman Floyd, Class of 1961

(Bay Village schools: Forestview Elementary 1950-1956, Bay High School 1957-1961)

Looking back at the last 50 years of my life since high school, I realize how important the 11 years of schooling I had in Bay Village were to the rest of my life!

My earliest memories are of Susie Kitchen and me playing lots of kickball. Bonnie Wright and I played dolls. Di Dyer would stand outside the front window of our Oakland Rd. house and made faces at me while my mother forced me to practice the piano, one hour a day! I rode my bike for hours on end singing “Happy Trails” from the Roy Rogers show. I pretended I was Dale Evans. I eventually married Dale Floyd.

My Girls Scout Troop 663 marched in the Decoration Day parades from the Bay cemetery to the Rose Garden near the Community House. I believe the Boy Scouts put flags on the graves of the veterans, and the girls put wildflowers on many of the graves. I developed an interest in history while looking at the gravemarkers (Cahoon, Bassett). A bugler stood on the sand on the shore of the lake and played “Taps”. Because we were on a cliff, we could only hear him but not see him. Maybe that influenced Kenny Hook’s life too. Eventually he became a bugler at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery. I thought of him often, when as a tour guide in Washington, D.C., I attended many wreath laying ceremonies at the same place where he had played during the Vietnam war. 

Getting to Forestview School from my house involved cutting through the woods behind the house of Police Chief Eaton and his wife, Mrs. Eaton, my kindergarten teacher. Can you imagine letting our kids cut through the woods today?

On to high school as a 7th grader where the building was huge. There were a lot of rules. Upperclassmen were awesome. Remember the noontime movies in the auditorium? Remember the pep rallies? There was one year when a bunch of us girls who lived east of the high school walked home from school each day and timed it so we could see “The Dick Clark Show” on afternoon television. We patterned our dress and our likes of music to what those Philadelphia kids were doing. Our Bay Way dances were based on whatever we saw them doing. Didn’t we take dance lessons in 7th grade at the Community House?

One little misdirection Marilyn Turner and I might have made when we were in high school was when we arrived back from lunch late, because we had watched Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy be driven through Bay Village on Lake Road, on his way from Lorain to Cleveland. I’m not sure we ever told our parents about that.

Di Dyer had a boy/girl party in the area behind her house. There is a picture from that party in one of our yearbooks. Speaking of yearbooks, I was the typing editor of our senior yearbook. Note on the page where the football players are listed (78-79), we have Larr Merritt and Buddy Kress. I am so proud!

Then there was the influence of my teachers. In 8th grade, Mrs. Mary Wsherick turned me on to American history. I read every biography I could find. It looks like the librarian, Mrs. Margaret Kessler, signed my yearbook. She must have been an early influence on me. I eventually became a K-6 teacher and, after I received my master’s degree when I was 40 years old, I became an elementary librarian.

George Meyers must have had some influence on me because he signed my yearbook. I hate to tell you how long I sat in Algebra class before I realized the angle of the triangle was supposed to be between the two sides. I should have joined his projection club because, not only did I run projectors daily as a teacher, but I sponsored my own little projection club for years! Today, I enjoy the status of being a problem solver, but definitely not a mathematician. (And definitely not a speller—these days I can’t even come close enough to the spelling of some words to have spell check recognize and correct them.)

Fred Mueller influenced me so much in history that when I first met Dale, at a bar at Ohio University, we talked for hours about the Civil War. Martin Klimko piqued my interest in the federal government, and when Dale and I were on our honeymoon, we not only visited Gettysburg, but also Washington, D.C. I was so excited that I jumped out of the car when we arrived at the west front of the Capitol building. I don’t know where I thought Dale was going to park! Years later, I found myself giving guided tours of the interior of the Capitol building. I have to admit, though, on our honeymoon I took a tour of the FBI building while Dale went next door to visit the National Archives (where he later worked!)

Curt Crews set such a high example of what music should be all about. Our class was so fortunate to have Barbara Bate, and her perfect pitch, as an accompanist to our choir. Singing while standing in the first row of the Christmas tree structure was certainly a highlight of my high school years.

Nowadays, I work at Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello in Charlottesville, VA. Wouldn’t Mr. Mueller be proud of me? I often reminisce as I relate the fact that the stone on Mr. Jefferson’s original tombstone was chipped by tourists when I think of how proud Maxine Wells was when she showed us some stone she had brought back from the Forum in Rome. 

Yes, Bay Village and its school system certainly gave me a grounding for a good life!