Ralph Thomas ’67
The 1964 Senior class play: The Antics of Andrew
One spring morning in 1964 Gloria Thomas woke with hundreds of red bumps all over her body. Her mom, Ethel said, “You have the measles and you can’t go to school.” Gloria replied, “But I have to go, the senior class play is today and I’m a vital part of it.” Gloria stayed home. Mrs. Peters, (the play director) was notified. She immediately went into hiding for three hours, and assumed the role. She performed admirably in the matinee and evening performances and saved the play with an A+ performance. When Gloria returned to school the next week several classmates (names redacted)
jokingly accused her of trying to sabotage the senior class play.
Jim Anderson ’63
I attended Margaret Lathrop’s funeral in Aberdeen in 1999. She taught in the Murdo schools from 1963 to 1984. One of those attending the funeral was Willard Ellis who was the Murdo superintendent from 1953 to 1956 and who I knew faintly from my grade school days. I had assumed he had died years before. As I recall, when Mr. Ellis entered the grade school building, there was probably some disciplining of some student to be carried out. Mr. Ellis became principal at Aberdeen Central after moving from Murdo. One of my good friends in Eureka, an Aberdeen Central grad, said yes, he got acquainted with Willard Ellis as a student and not in a very friendly way.
Greg J. Brunskill ’59 from Glorious Mud
The high school band played concerts on the porch of the Jones County courthouse in the summertime. The poet laureate of South Dakota, Badger Clark, came to our town school in a black cape, high lace boots and a high-crowned hat to recite his prairie/cowboy poems. I can still remember the “clank, clank, clank” of the metal chains rattling on the big steel A-frame of the flagpole and the playground swings at the grade school. At recess, we would play “pom, pom, pull away” and sometimes the big kids would run right over the little kids.
Paul Anderson ’32, As I remember it.
My brother Walter ( Paul Anderson’s brother Walter) went back to high school in the fall of 1934. By this time they had started dormitories for the country students. The first year the boys slept in one upstairs room of the old grade school and ate meals in the old annex building. He told some wild stories about 15 boys sleeping in one big room. By then he was the biggest boy there, and quite often was the “peacemaker” and “rules maker.” Walter was playing guard or tackle on one of Murdo’s best 11-man football teams in the fall of 1934. He was on the 2nd team in basketball when Murdo beat Rapid City in the region and went to the state tourney in Mitchell. He and two other boys hooked the freight to Mitchell for the tournament, sleeping in the depot at nights. When they hooked the train coming home, the boxcars were all shut, so they rode the coal car—some very black, cold, boys when they got to Murdo.
Those 70ish Girls 