When senior year is canceled, adulthood hits with a jolt

When the state closed six schools to keep 17 black children from entering them, it also locked out nearly 10,000 white students.

"My world and all of our worlds had changed, and it was through no fault of our own," said Suzanne Shipp Owens, Granby High School Class of 1959.

Once schools closed, parents searched frantically for tutoring classes, particularly for seniors. But not everyone could afford them, and no one was certain that colleges would give credit for them. Some students joined the Navy, got married, started working or just never received a diploma. The senior class became known as the "Lost Class of '59."

"For 10,000 students out there," Owens said, "there are 10,000 stories."

The closing of the schools in September 1958 was an abrupt push into adulthood, Owens said, particularly for students like her who had grown up in a "Leave It To Beaver" world. That summer, they were listening to Chuck Berry and hanging out at Doumar's on Monticello Avenue, where fierce school rivalries were set aside over hamburgers and milkshakes.

Mary Jane Harnly Birdsong was elected president of Maury High School's student government for the 1959 class during the spring of '58. She and her Cabinet spent the summer concentrating on the most important events of their teen lives - homecoming and the pep rally, preparing for college and making their parents proud. She said they had no problems going to school with blacks, that it only seemed to bother a group of powerful, "shortsighted politicians, and these guys refused to see the consequences of their actions."

She was crushed when the schools closed.

"We were bewildered," said Birdsong, who is retired and lives in Suffolk. "What's going to happen to the school system that gave us the structure that we lived our daily lives by? And I don't think that the Norfolk 17 felt any differently."

She scrambled for tutoring classes and eventually moved to Danville to attend a boarding school, where she completed her senior year and started her first year of college before returning home to present-day Old Dominion University. The Maury principal eventually allowed Birdsong and about 20 other students to receive their Maury diplomas.

A sense of loss binds the Lost Class, particularly now, as they try to plan their 50th reunions for next year and struggle to find classmates.

Suzanne Baker Horton was one of about 125 students who graduated from Norview High in 1959. The original class was estimated to be between 425 and 450. She was able to get into a tutoring class but missed her friendships.

"That was so hard. We were used to our core friends," Horton said. "I started first grade with so many of the people I should have graduated with."

Granby's 1959 senior class was estimated originally at 480. About 180 graduated. Michael "Mickey" Thomas wanted to be one of them. That summer, he had one senior-year goal: to make it again to the statewide chorus.

When schools closed, his parents enrolled him in night classes at Oscar Smith High in South Norfolk. Students started a chorus, but it wasn't the same.

He lost contact with several friends who moved away. A number went to college "conditionally," he said. If they could hack the college-level work, they could stay. If not, they would have to leave.

He said that, like a lot of his friends, he didn't understand why so many adults were fussing about integrating. He lived in Riverfront and often played ball with the black kids from Titustown, with no problems.

Thomas went to college at ODU and returned to Granby to teach music. He retired in 2000. His high school diploma says Oscar Smith, but he still considers himself a Granby Comet.

Four years ago, he petitioned the School Board to award Granby diplomas to those Lost Class seniors who had satisfied their high school credits. The request was denied.

"It's not the piece of paper, it's psychological," he said. When it came to closing the schools, "Nobody asked us. We were victims, too."

Denise Watson Batts, (757) 446-2504, denise.batts@pilotonline.com