Proud and loyal: School ties are strong for Copley Class of 1952 | Mark J. Price
School days, school days. Dear old golden rule days.
Nostalgia was in the air and chicken paprikash was on the menu when Copley High School’s Class of 1952 held its 71st reunion at the New Era Restaurant in Akron.
The class had 50 graduates. Six alumni, all in their late 80s, attended the Aug. 26 gathering, plus five spouses and friends. The classmates have known each other since the first grade.
“My granddaughter tells me, according to the Guiness Book of World Records, the record is 77 years: Cherokee Community High School in Columbus, Kansas,” classmate Milo Chelovitz reported.
Depending on interpretation, there are other claims of 83 years or more.
“We’re not looking for a record,” Chelovitz noted. “We simply are proud of our love and loyalty for one another. Not many classes have bothered to stay in touch. Not in today’s day and age.”
The class had its first reunion in the summer of 1952 and met every five years afterward. Following the 60th reunion, the classmates decided to meet every year, “since we were getting older and less predictable,” Chelovitz said. They’ve dined at the New Era for the past decade.
The 1952 Copley graduates who attended the reunion were Carrie (Boss) Arnold, Anita (Knoch) Collins, Faye (Von Gunten) Hill, Pat (Wilcox) Osborn, Mary Lou (Stricklen) Karg and Chelovitz. Also attending was Don Martin, who moved to Norton in junior high but continues to stay in touch.
Five classmates could not attend: Bob Allen, Lois (Ball) Bennett, Art Bailey, Dale Flesher and Mabel (Singleton) Rosier. Three others who left Copley before 1952, Frances (Yale) Jarvis, JoAnn (Stricklen) Gaylord and Ron Seketa, attend the reunions when they can.
The gatherings are a swirl of memories and nostalgia. Classmates remember when all 12 grades were housed in a single building on Cleveland-Massillon Road.
Grade school was on the first floor with junior high and high school on the second. The cafeteria, home economics, industrial arts and business and typing classes were in the basement. The gym was on the first floor.
“Basketball was played there with the stage, end walls and seating defining where out of bounds would be,” Chelovitz recalled. “Dances, senior class play and graduation were held there.”
Copley offered three sports: football, basketball and track. Eli Floasin coached all three. The school was in the Summit League with Richfield, Bath, Macedonia, Northfield, Norton, Clinton and Canal Fulton.
The football field had no stands. Spectators walked the sidelines to watch games. There was no track either. Athletes practiced by running to Copley Circle and making a loop back to school.
The Class of 1952 saved money for two years to pay for a senior trip to New York City. Previous classes went to Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie.
Those memories have lasted a lifetime. The class is going strong 71 years after graduation and looking forward to its 2024 reunion at the New Era.
“That’s not bad for a bunch of kids that were raised on the ‘celery muck farms in Copley,’ ” Chelovitz said. “That was the Buchtel High School students’ description of us in those days. Now they all live here.”
Advertising from up high
Richfield resident Chuck Ellis read the article about Goodyear restoring its iconic sign over its former headquarters on East Market Street in Akron.
“Not many people remember there was a similar Goodyear sign in Bath at the intersection of Ghent Road and Cleveland-Massillon Road,” he wrote. “In those days that was state Route 176 and U.S. 21. It stood tall and was visible to southbound traffic.”
He believes the sign flashed “Go Go Goodyear” like the one over Goodyear Hall, and thinks the company removed the Bath advertising in the 1960s.
Goodyear had a similar sign at Chittenden Corners, where Streetsboro Road meets old Route 8 in Boston Heights, and another overlooking Route 21 in Independence.
They were so bright that airmail pilots used them for navigation.
Reader Elias Vujovich, a tour guide at the MAPS Museum at Akron-Canton Airport, pointed out that Goodyear’s blimp isn’t really a blimp. Not anymore.
“It is a zeppelin as it has an internal metal framework,” he wrote. “ … Note the cabin is far forward and a blimp has the cabin in the middle.”
A blimp is a helium-filled bag with no internal structure. Goodyear began to replace its blimps with semi-rigid airships in 2014, but it continues to call them blimps.
“Look! It’s the Goodyear dirigible!” just doesn’t have the same ring.
This and that
I’m not Nostradamus, but I can predict with 100% accuracy that it will rain April 8, 2024. Because this is Ohio. And that is the date of the greatly anticipated solar eclipse.
Always be kind to the hard-working employees of the Peanut Shoppe in downtown Akron. They work for peanuts.
Highland Square’s PorchRokr festival is a blast, but who came up with that darned spelling? If this becomes a trend, the NBC meteorologist will be AlRokr, the shoe store will be FootLokr, Batman’s nemesis will be TheJokr and the cake mix will be BettyCrokr.
Is there a school anywhere in the world with as long a name as Akron’s National Inventors Hall of Fame School, Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Learning? Thank goodness it doesn’t have a football team. The name wouldn’t fit on jerseys.
Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com
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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: School ties are strong for Copley Class of 1952
