Not Entirely "Unprecedented"

"What has been will be again

what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun."

Placeholder until I find a photo from 1946 or 1996

 Every time I hear the 2020 buzzword "UNPRECEDENTED" I think of this verse (Ecclesiastes 1:6).  I do pity all the high school and college graduates who are deprived of their senior activities and commencement exercises, but it is not unprecedented.

My own mother's high school graduation celebration did not happen until 50 years after the fact.  After her recent death, I found among her things some essays written by her Baylor roommate, Mary Ann Gill Gilchrist (pictured in the middle next to my mom).  Even though she has been gone five years, I want to invite Mary Ann to be my guest blogger today (pending her children's permission).

FIFTY YEARS TO GRADUATE, by Mary Ann Gilchrist

             The questions then were

What to wear,

How to fix our hair,

Wearing those funny hats askew

For high school graduation

Who knew?

In early May, 1946, World War II had ended, but the dreaded disease of Poliomyelitis, Infantile Paralysis, invaded our world in San Antonio, Texas.  Reports in Bexar County alone were 108 infections and 14  deaths, one of which was our classmate, Allene Miller.  Newspapers headlined the closing of schools, churches, theaters, swimming pools.  Graduations and celebrations were not to be.  Knowing so little about the disease and how it was spread, the city started a massive clean up campaign.  Our high school senior class was dispersed as families whisked their children off to the country and less populous destinations.

Separated from our friends, we began an intense correspondence routine.  Every day the mail brought humorous letters along with depressing newspaper clippings of statistics and pictures of iron lungs, the metal cylinder with its rocking and incessant noise, breathing for wasted muscles.  Even my diploma arrived folded in an envelope.  It was there I had my seventeenth birthday and dreamed of getting out of Childress, Texas, and going to college.

Fifty years later in 1996 our high school graduation took place on the stage of Alamo Heights School in San Antonio with us in our royal blue caps and gowns, marching across the stage to receive our unfolded real leather bound diplomas.  Television networks were there filming our laughing, squealing, and hugging.  The Public Broadcasting System told our story.

Newspapers across Texas heralded the event and recalled the summer when the sniffles or sore throat caused concern, because of the disease that left many of its victims crippled or dead.  The preventive Salk vaccine was not to be available until almost ten years later when it was administered to us and our children by drops on a sugar cube.

The time and circumstances which had separated classmates 50 years before suddenly evaporated and our questions had now become

Does it matter what we wear?

A little color for the hair?

Throw those funny hats into the air

for 100 of our 116 were there.