Katrina Mitchell Piper Back to Classmembers Page
 

From 45th Reunion

Memories of Days At LRCHS

Most of my memories LRCHS are good ones.  I truly loved and appreciated the school itself.  Didn’t everyone love the pond, and the beautiful structure?
My favorite times were in the a-capella choir.  We had such a great group of people who shared the love of singing; not only in my junior year, but in my senior year.  When Gov Faubus did his thing and closed LRCHS the year we all would have entered the 10th grade, it never entered my mind that the music director I had in junior high would be at Central when we returned.  Miss Loisjean Raymond may have been “odd”, but she knew her music business.  I truly learned points about being a choir member, how to sight-read, how to blend with other voices, how to enunciate, and all the little things that those who could not afford voice lessons might not ever have learned otherwise.
Although I never pursued a musical career, but got my MRS. Degree instead, it was the things I learned in choir that helped me the few times I did sing as a performer.  I got to share the stage with the All-Navy talent winner at an awards ceremony while at NATO in Italy!  Our guest of honor was a former POW in Viet Nam.  (6 years) My voice is long gone now, but my memories remain.
By the time I entered LRCHS, it was the 10th school I had attended in my school life.  LRCHS was the “most and best everything”.  Such as, the “most students”, the “most beautiful”, the “best lunches” and, more importantly, the” best curriculum” for a high school in Arkansas.
One of the funny things I remember was that the math teacher, Mrs. Poindexter thought that boys were more intelligent than girls and that girls really could not learn math as well as boys could.  Rather torque my jaws.  I knew a few that proved her wrong.
I did not really belong to any particular clique, but I remember friendliness and courtesy from all “groups”.  I remember admiring so many classmates for their accomplishments and some for their ability to mix and mingle effortlessly.  It is a crying shame I never had the guts to say so.  Some were good at mechanics.  Some were artists.  Some were intellectuals.  And that Albert Pool was one great musician.
In my mind, our years were in the final years of common courtesies, or what my grandmother would have called “good breeding”.  Sure, we were typical teenagers and there has always been and always will be “situations”, but by and large, we were a good bunch of kids.  At least it was so in my memory.


- Katrina (Marlene) Mitchell Piper