Brock, Hamilton student from 1945-48

We had a Mr. Johnson here.  He ran a fabulous intramural program.  We had A, B, and C leagues, the C leagues were for seventh graders, and B leagues for eighth graders and A leagues for ninth graders.  And if you were good enough you could play up a league or so.  We had after school sports and it was flag football, there was basketball.  He, himself, was a champion in the state of Washington for badminton. So we had badminton and table tennis.

A fella by the name of George Austin was principal in '45 when I came here and his wife was the school nurse.  And I swear that we had to wear a tie.  The boys went to school with the boys and the girls went to school with the girls and we did not mix in the lunch room.  And then about 1948, the first semester we had a woman on the third floor, she came apart, could not handle the boys.  We had a couple of real tough kids in there... They finally mixed them the next year. 

Things were run real tight.  You were expected to be here and you were expected to be polite.  And the teachers were fabulous.  I had a lot of teachers here that really lit my fire....

I come down the hallway today and I walk right by what was the book room.  And the book room is that door on this side of the P.E. room, boy’s P.E. They used to let me out of class, I’d go down there and this guy would show up with this pot of glue and he’d heat it up and he’d fix all the books. I’d be in there and I’m hauling books back to teachers and everything. You know I’d have a good time, but he was a wonderful guy. 

Diane and Betty, Hamilton students from 1946-49

I believe we came over here from John B. Allen in January of 1946.  We were a midterm class which they don’t have anymore. We were the last midterm class to enter the system. We left here in January ’49 and went on up to Lincoln High School.

We had a sewing teacher ... and of course back in those days your first project was to make an apron.  And you had to embroider your initials on it. The apron was for our cooking class....  If she didn’t like the way you basted your apron, she probably would just reach over and tear it right off you.  Didn’t happen to me but it did happen to other people.

I made a dress eventually.  I remember I forgot to add the two inches at the waist because the pattern was short, so I had a pieced waist.  And then she and I, in those days, were doing a lot of sewing on our own, at home. We tried to dress like the Bobbsy twins. We dressed alike, made skirts alike and peddle pushers alike.

I was delighted to get hand-me-downs from my neighbors that were older girls. You thought nothing of wearing hand-me-downs, you’re darn glad to get ‘em. And material was scarce, right after the war too, for the first couple of years.

We lived two blocks from Greenlake.  Over on the west side.  And we lived at Greenlake, especially in the summer time. We sometimes would take our bikes to school here, park them in the back and ride through the park, Lower Woodland, to get home. Or we walked. Once in awhile we would take the city bus, but very seldom. The city bus you got your car tokens two for a nickel.

Well there was gym class, you had to participate in. But you know it wasn’t cool to do sports in those days.
I mean you were really labeled if you were a sports person.

During the time we were here the kid’s skirt lengths went real long, remember?  And in protest the boys rolled their pants legs up as high as they could, in protest to the long styles.  And then the teachers’d stand out in the hallway and shake their fingers and say, "Down, down, down," so they had to roll ‘em back down again. 

Graduation was always fun to watch because that’s usually the first time that most of the girls wore heels.  And marching up the stairs, comin’ across and down without fallin’ on their face.

Norma, Hamilton student from 1947-50

We walked.  It probably took us a half hour, 45 minutes to walk to school.  I lived over on 43rd & 3rd Ave NW, close to Ross Playfield.  And we walked all the way to school - there weren’t any school buses.

I remember the music teacher, she was very strict, I mean, there was no messing around.  Kids behaved then. Everybody wore nice clothes, you know, there weren’t any sloppy dressers.  No baseball hats backwards and all that kind of stuff.  We all were pretty much ladies and gentlemen.

I had my music lesson once a week and that was about all we could really afford in those days.  We didn’t do a lot of going out to the movies and all that kind of stuff.  We just didn’t have the money.

A lot of people didn’t even have cars.  It was just a way of life.  We walked, took the bus , it was just that way.

Clinton, Hamilton student from 1950-52

[My favorite teacher] was Thomas O'Neil, the print shop teacher. I understand according to some of the rosters out there he was teaching here in the 20’s. He was very nice. And, the class was very interesting and we got to run the presses, set type, and print the school newspaper, print names on our Christmas cards and that sort of thing. Try to avoid dumping a tray of type. Because then you had to put all those little letters back (laugh).

it was kind of special when I went here in 1951 and ’52 because it was Seattle’s 100th birthday. All the Seattle schools were participating in events at the old Civic Auditorium, which is now McCaw Hall. And Hamilton had an exhibit on the exhibit floor of forest products. So, the students in Art or in History that worked on it got sprung from school to go down and help put it together. So, that was neat!

I miss the bust of Hamilton that was in the main entry hall. I wonder what happened to it?

When [my parents] came down [from Alaska] in February of ’51, we moved to Crown Hill and I was still able to go to Hamilton for the 9th grade … could make that choice. Either be a top dog here, or bottom dog at Ballard High School. So, I chose to go top dog. That meant a ride of two busses to get here, from Crown Hill. And, just by luck one of my teachers commuted that way. His name was, I think, John Caruga. I had him for a class called “Our Community” … here. Very nice person, but I got a ride with him once in a while.

There weren’t any school busses. In fact, if the school needed busses, like to get us down to the Civic Auditorium, they just kinda charted them from Seattle Transit. The busses weren’t as scary as they are today (laugh).

Bruce, Hamilton student from 1952-55

I remember in the print shop we had to set the type, we had to learn type-setting; each student had a type case and we had to keep it full, we had to sort out the type and put it in each compartment that was for that letter.  We set the type for the school newspaper and I actually printed the school newspaper.

One other thing that happened while I was here - transistors were just developed.  In, I believe it was 1953?  Raytheon had a transistor, it was the part number was CK-722.  I remember making a radio and building it inside of a band-aid box, which were metal in those days.  And another friend of mine, who was my classmate, we both made ‘em and for an antenna we clipped 'em onto the fence out back here and we could listen through a headset to the radio.

I think I might’ve been the only Asian here...   I think when I got to Lincoln there was one other.  There might’ve been one other here, but basically Whites.  There was no Latinos, there was no Blacks up here at that time.  They were all down south, Garfield and Franklin and those districts. 

Janine, Hamilton student from 1959-62

We didn’t have Title 9 so girls didn’t have organized sports. But I remember we did do some basketball & PE.  I remember doing free throw shots. We did have teams.  My team was called “Jeanie’s Meanies”.

I had a little transistor and man it was playing all the time. The Twist - Chubby Checker & The Twist. 

We had to wear skirts or dresses, no pants.  So it was a skirt or a dress, and sweaters.

We had to sit and work on work sheets and be very quiet. Not a whole lot of interaction.  It was a lot of just sitting and listening to the teacher, being, you know, very, very quiet.

Astor came from Latvia and I remember she couldn’t speak any English.  And I helped her with her English.  But that’s the only person that I remember that was really from a foreign country.

For fun, I got together with some of my friends. We’d walk to Green Lake, walk to Woodland Park. In my neighborhood we would play baseball on the four corners of the street.  In those days there weren’t as many cars as there are now.  But we played baseball.

Barry, Hamilton student in the mid 1960's

I graduated Lincoln in 1967 and went to college back east in 1968 – the first time I heard a woman swear was in 1968. 

I started taking Spanish when I got here, 7th grade, for 3 years, and then I took it even one year in high school.  I had 4 years of Spanish, but we had it every day for an hour and he really focused on pronunciation. He was a very very good teacher. You know, I go to Spain, I sell machines in Spain. It's really helped me. I get really good compliments from native speakers from wherever I go in Mexico or Chile or Spain on my accent and that comes from him and the way he taught Spanish.

It was that one teacher, that one teacher that really inspired me to be in that field. Basically what he gave me was just sort of an excitement, you know, that this is really an exciting thing and no one's done it before ... It was that he challenged me, and then I just kept doing things like that. I went to Lincoln in High School and I was the president of my class at Lincoln High School in 1967.  I went to Harvard University, got a scholarship, full scholarship, to go to Harvard, and I was there for 4 years, got a degree in marine biology from there, marine biology and physics.

We started an inter-racial exchange, me and 4 other kids at Lincoln through the American Friends Service Committee. We set up this inter-racial exchange with Garfield, and, it was great.

Louisa, Deborah, and Betsy, Hamilton students from about 1964-67

One of the things that we remembered was that at lunch time they played movies in the auditorium. And we’d all scream. It was always a scary movie. Who was the teacher? What was his name? He’d always flick the lights on and off and yell at us. “Don’t scream. I’m going to turn it off if you scream.” But they always played a scary movie. It was during the lunch half hour and so you went everyday. It was like a serial installment of the movie. Five minutes of the movie. Yeah, that was about it. ‘Cause we’d scream the other 10 minutes.

We had sewing one quarter and cooking one semester. And the boys took woodshop and autoshop. And I wanted to take woodshop and they told me I couldn’t because I wasn’t a boy. But they did, at some point they did let the boys come into the cooking class and they let the girls go into woodshop and it was a huge revolution. It was just like, oh my god, these kids, these boys are actually going to have to cook at some point in their life. They’re not going to just get married and have some woman cook for them for the rest of their life. Although that’s sort of how we were raised. That’s what our function was. So times have changed, thank goodness.

What different nationalities were there at school? None. Well, gee I was Ukrainian and I still am Ukrainian. Well, yeah, I know, but not that many. No, not that many.

This was kind of a blue collar neighborhood.

We had to memorize the, “We the People of the United States in order to form a more perfect government.” But I for the life of me couldn’t memorize that, so when it was my turn to go up and talk, she sat at her desk with her book open, so I just came and stood right behind her and read right over her shoulder. (laughter) And got an A, and I just read the whole thing. We also did the Gettysburg address, wasn’t that first?

I remember coming from 6th grade where you sat in one class the whole time and had one teacher and Peggy Plummer’s mother worked with the school district and she got us into this building, oh I don’t know, two or three days before school started. We had our schedules, you know they mailed you your schedule. So we knew what the rooms were. And so we went  around, we went around to all the rooms and so we knew that OK, first we had to go here, then we had to go there, and then to the next room, and so when school started, I think we were the only ones in the whole class that weren’t lost.

I do remember coming from here and the first day at Lincoln High School. I was absolutely in shock because I saw some guy coming down the stairway and he had on hippie clothes. You know, what you would have thought of as hippie clothes then. He had jeans that were all torn up and he had patches sewn all over them… And his hair was long and I just about died right on the stairway. I was probably with Peggy and I turned to her and said, “They let him in school? Do you suppose the principal’s seem him yet?”  And somebody else turned and said, “Nobody cares, it’s high school.” And I went, ooooh. This is different.

We had a club. There was a television show on. It was called the Man from Uncle. And Robert Vaughn was the star. And we had a spy club. It was called the Women from Anti-Annoyed.... We had a book of all these codes and all this stuff, but we didn’t do spy stuff so we made paper flowers and sold them and donated the money to good causes.

Dan, Hamilton student in the late 1960s

When I was a 7th grader my first class was in the gym, my second class was history right down the hall, and at the end of the hall was my math class.  Everyday I’d go to P.E. Second period I’d wave hi to the P.E. teacher from the hallway where I’d been sent out of class.  And third period I’d say hi to the P.E. teacher as I’d been kicked out of that class for just talkin’ in class.

It really wasn’t until 7th grade that Mr. Romstad kinda spelled it out for me and said, "You know if you wanna play sports, you gotta stay in class. " And then I kinda put it together, so that’s what’s momentous for me, that’s what I remember.

All of our friends, we’d all get together. It probably took us about twenty minutes to walk to school. I remember staying at school real late because of sports.

The teachers, I think they could buy coffee and rolls and things like that but for the students there was nothing, so we’d have breakfast at home.  Then we’d walk to school and that was it.  The Olympia Pizza parlor, over on 45th, used to be a Dairy Queen.

I was in the transitional years when busing first started, so the school, when I first started was pretty white, and then busing came about and we became more integrated.  And that was a positive step, got to be exposed to different people and that was a good thing.

All the homerooms would form intramural teams and then we’d do all sorts of sports by season.  We’d do soccer, we’d do baseball, or softball I guess, and football, and we had intramurals basketball, intramural basketball was very competitive.  That was a lot of fun.

Tim, Hamilton student from 1968-70

[Kids were] tough. The neighborhood’s changed quite a bit. It was a working class, lower middle class, middle class neighborhood where a lot of our parents were ....my dad was a truck driver, a friend of dad’s worked for the post office, a lot of blue collar workers. 

I was here during the busing years.  It was not mandatory busing, it was voluntary busing.... We would walk to school because we lived in the neighborhood....Then about 10 minutes before the bell would ring, there would be 3 or 4, 5, 6, 7 buses that would come from the central district and generally they would let the kids off right by the gym. Of course those students wanted to play basketball just like we did, but we’d already been here for like a half hour, 45 minutes playing basketball in the gym.  So you could imagine when someone takes the basketball away from a game that’s going on – those were difficult days.

That’s probably the best thing about Hamilton and Lincoln - there were a lot of quality teachers that cared about their kids.  In fact, it motivated me to get my education degree and to teach high school for 11 years. 

You know the street used to go through here. Wallingford Playfield was a lot different.  For physical education the teacher would send us out and we’d run up the steps on Wallingford Playfield and we’d run around the track, because it was all dirt. 

There was a diamond, there was a baseball diamond at Wallingford Playfield on the northeast, the northeast corner was a baseball diamond.  And it was all dirt.  And then there was a field house.  And, you know they took out a whole block of houses here to expand Wallingford Playfield, that happened when we were also at Hamilton. 

You have to remember we were also here during the Vietnam War.  I can remember sitting in my Math class and looking out on the freeway and the freeway being closed down with demonstrators. I think they were walking from the UW to the Federal Courthouse Building downtown.

My age group that was here was here during the remodel....  We started when they had the old locker rooms.  Now, you talk about putting 300 7th grade boys in a locker room that’s about 6 times as big as this room that we’re interviewing in. So we had a lot of interaction in there and some fights and things. They got rid of that enclosed locker room and put the lockers in the halls in the remodel.

I’m very happy that they’re gonna save parts of Hamilton.  You know, my elementary’s closed – it’s a shopping mall.  My high school’s closed - it’s now being used as Garfield.  But I can bring my kid here, I have a 15 & a half year old kid that’s a 9th grader and I can bring him here and I can show him where I went to junior high school.  That’s important for people that live in the Wallingford area that are growing up here.

Do I have any memories about Hamilton?  I wrote some down. The old Wallingford playfield and the fieldhouse.  Track in the spring.  There was a pole vault pit up there which had sawdust, you had to jump into sawdust.  That was very hard. We did some crazy things.  I already told you about running around the track for PE. Intramural football at Lower Woodland.  We used to have to run the 3 flights of the stairs.  Our basketball coach, for conditioning, would make us run the stairs, from the bottom floor to the 3rd floor - that’s difficult, they’re concrete - and do it 20 times.  And that was our warm-up thing.  Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, I used to hate that.  I used to get very tired.  It got you in good condition.  Then there was an old teen drop-in center which has been torn down that was up here between Hamilton and Lincoln.  So this is going way back, late ’60’s.  Getting paddled by Clarence Daniel in 7th grade, that’s a big memory.

Kathleen, Hamilton student from 1968 - 71

Back in around ‘70, we had school busing and they would bus all the African American people that lived in like the central district into our school because this was basically all white around here.  So, they didn’t want to be bused and we weren’t real crazy about them being bused at that time – it was a new concept....  We’d have food fights, things of that nature.  So, it was kind of turbulent times then.  Things were changing.  And things were being forced on us that we weren’t expecting, per se.  But it was a good thing, it was a good thing.

I lived over on Linden Ave North so I had to walk here.  I walked over the Aurora Bridge, you know the overpass?  Walked down Linden, caught the overpass and then made my way over here.

I remember wearing clogs.... With big mack overalls.  My mother just was “what are you wearing that stuff for”, you know, it was awful. And it was kind of that era of flower power and bright flowery stuff.

This core group of girls that I still hang out with, one of the things we’d do for fun is we would go to the Highland Ice Arena for birthday parties.

The ski bus was fun....  I was tall back in junior high.  Back then they wanted you to get skis that were like 10 inches taller than you.  I mean it was these humongous skis they wanted you to have. Anyway, I bought all this equipment, right?  And then the next year, they come out with these little short skis – that it’s better to learn on short skis!  So, needless to say, I got off on a bad start with skiing. 

Christine, Hamilton student from 1968-71

I guess I was the last year of ninth graders here. 

I remember going in the gym at lunch and spinning forty five records with some of the blacks that were bused in and listening to Motown music and I loved it.

Did I get in trouble in school?  Yeah.  What was different about this, I used to get in fights.  Instead of spending time in the library I was in the locker room getting in fights.  Not really proud of that, but that’s a whole other story.

But I’ll tell you I had the cuttin’ class system down to a T.  I’m sure this wouldn’t work any more - it's the only reason why I feel comfortable sharing it.... You had first period, home room, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth, right?  If you weren’t at home room you went down on the late roster, [but] if you came in with a note during second, you just went to second and then you were on the absent roster for the rest of the day, so third, fourth, fifth and sixth wouldn’t report you if you weren’t there.  Laughs.  I was a bad kid. I some how managed to pass everything though. 

My family moved around and I dropped out [of school]. When I got myself together at a later age and went to college, I actually managed to be in the honors society. Big shock to my friends and Hamilton.

Ms. Chow, I think she was twenty four.  And I think we were her first class.  I don’t know if it was my 7th, 8th, or 9th, but this was her first teaching job right out of college.  So I was like 14 and she was 24. She was really motivating.  I remember she was sneaky. We had the canned food drive.  We had these two barrels out - one was the boys barrel and one was the girls barrel and we let the boys get confident that they were winning cause we didn’t put much in our barrel. We had our lockers all full of canned stuff.  So, just like an hour or two before the cut off we all got to go out to our lockers and put it all out front - and then we won. She got us involved, even kids like me that weren’t really into school. She was really a good influence. 

I miss this place, it’s good.

Kathy, Hamilton student about 1969-72

My first year was just prior to when they did the remodel, the first remodel downstairs where they put in the new auditorium seats and they tore out the old lockers and the locker rooms.

Probably the most exciting [experience] was making our gym teacher proud of us for winning a very important volleyball game.  We went to Asa Mercer down in the central district which was rated as the premiere girl’s volleyball team in the city. And Cheryl said, “If you just, if you just win one of the games,” because I think we played two or three games as the set, and we did! – we ended up winning one of the games against the school that was rated number one and she was quite happy with us.  We ended up going to her mom’s restaurant, Ruby Chow’s restaurant, having Chinese food as a reward for winning that game.

Cheryl, Hamilton teacher 1970-72

it was a great 1st year of teaching. In those days we didn’t have Title 9 so I just taught all girl’s PE because the boys and girls were separate.  I guess I was the either 4th or 5th  girl’s PE teacher and according to the 9th grader’s girls at that time, I would be the next one to leave because they were going to scare me out. 

In those days they didn’t have sports for girls either, so I started varsity volleyball and varsity basketball for the girls. I had to really fight with the then principal.... I remember a nice, older gentleman with very, very traditional, ultra traditional viewpoints.  It was to the point where when I was in the gym I would wear my PE outfit, and then when I went out to go get lunch I would have to go into my office and get changed into a dress and then go to the teacher’s lounge to have lunch. Because in those days female teachers were not allowed to wear pants. 

I had asked for a little bit of budget to take the girls, our sports girls, to another school to participate. He said he didn’t have any more budget, otherwise he would give it to me....   And then I find out from the music teacher, he’s telling me he’s taking his band people to all these field trips.  And I said, “Wow, how did you get the money?” He told me, “Mr. Daniels just gave it me”....  So to rebel, I decided the next day I was going to wear my bellbottoms.  It was really kinda funny because I became like a shadow on the wall, trying to slip around without getting caught.  It was interesting because the women, every time they saw me, they said, “Have you gotten caught yet?  Have you gotten caught?”  I mean, it was a big deal!  So I made it all through Friday without getting fired. Then I decided over the weekend, forget it, you know, I wear bellbottoms outside and I might as well wear it inside.  That kind of started a rebellion with the women and a couple other teachers my age, they started wearing it.  He frowned on it but he never called us on it.

That’s when we didn’t have mandatory busing, it was voluntary busing so a number of black children were voluntarily bused in here and they seemed to rotate around me, if you will, you know, be able to identify with me. 

After that first day when this tall, tall 9th grader looked down at me and said, “You’re going to be number 4, we got rid of 3 already, you’re going to be number 4”.  I remember looking up at her and saying, “I don’t think so!” And so I decided, okay, now so how am I going to do this? So what I did was I had fitness stations.  And I was much younger in those days and a little bit more fit, so I demonstrated all the stations to the girls.  And that impressed them. 

Then they had a traditional canned food drive in November.  And the girls, you know, were apathetic because they didn’t feel anybody really cared about them or thought that much of them. So the boys started bragging about how they were going to win again.  And I just was scratching my head and I said, “Uh uh, this is not going to happen under my watch!” ... I would talk to the girls. I said, “We’re going to have a secret.  Can you keep a secret?”  ... I told them, bring it in paper sacks - we’re not going to put it in the can in the front hall.  Let the boys get cocky & confident.  So they were secretly bringing it to school.... And so the boys would taunt the girls, “Oh, we got more cans than you. Da da da da da da.”  And so, this was going on for the week.  And then I learned a trick from my mother.  “If you’re going to do something good, Cheryl, and the kids are involved, let the world know.”  So I wrote the newspaper and I called KOMO and Channel 13 and told them about how the girls had a secret....  Just before the final, the custodian told the Vice Principal he thought something was fishy because the girls were running in and out of the locker room.  And so sure enough, the younger Vice Principal found out what was happening. He got a big chuckle out of it, so he didn’t tell anybody.... The deadline was gonna be Friday at 3:00.... [I] got them out of class and they marched down the hall with over something like a thousand cans.  The newspaper people came and the press came.  They had spotlights, you know, on the girls coming down the hall with all these cans. Mr. Daniels, I remember him opening the door and [saying], “What’s all this racket?”  And then I said, “Mr. Daniels, you’re on TV!”  And so of course he smiled, and says, “Oh yes, you know they’re here because the girls did a wonderful job and brought in all these cans and it’s overflowing in the hallway!” He just says, “Yes, yes, our girls are very good!” It was hilarious. 

You know, the kids were great. The girls were wonderful, and the boys were wonderful.  I never actually taught their classes but they soon learned not to mess with Miss Chow.

On the faculty was one of my former junior high teachers that I had at Washington Junior High. He was teaching here and his name was Mr. Harsh. He says, “Oh Cheryl, just call me by my first name”.  And I said, “Oh, Mr. Harsh, I can’t. You know, I just, I just can’t!” ... If you ask me what his name, first name is, I don’t know!  I always thought it was mister.  I had him when I was at Washington and then he ended up over here.  I think it was a little bit too much for him after two years - I think he either retired or he decided to move.

It was mostly Caucasian kids who lived in the neighborhood. Then there was, I would say, at least a bus load and a half of African American kids that voluntarily bused in.  And I remember two Chinese families that happened to live in the area, that came to the school.  So that was the mix.

Flag football.  I tried to expose the girls to different activities that they might not have had the opportunity...  And in those days we didn’t do anything co-ed.  Although, on flag football men’s PE teacher & I, we did a little bit co-ed because some of the boys that he had really didn’t like football didn’t want to get into the rough and tumble stuff.  So, they enjoyed playing with the girls and the girls enjoyed playing with the guys so, that was fun.

I’m really naïve. When I ran for Seattle Council, they asked a number of candidates at one forum, “Have you ever done marijuana?", and I could honestly say, “No, I’ve never done drugs.” So anyways, it was my first month here.... The girls said, “Miss Chow, there’s a roach in the shower room!” And I said, “Oh my goodness!” So I grabbed the broom from my office and I came running into the shower room and I go, “Where is it?” And they looked at me like “Is she for real?” So then they pointed at the roach, you know, the joint.  And they go, “Right there.” I’m looking for it and I said, “Where?  Did it move?  God, it’s a fast cockroach." And they just fell out.  I think that’s when I won over the tough girls…  They just kinda said, “Oh, we got to take care of this poor woman, she just has no clue."

This is why the boys liked me - because they found out Bruce Lee lived with our family.  His dad was an opera star and my dad was trained in opera. My mom and dad helped the opera people in Hong Kong, especially the ones that were getting older, get some aid and help them get a home for retired opera singers. [Bruce Lee’s father was a] Chinese opera singer in Hong Kong.  Bruce was starting to get big in the Hong Kong movies and wanted to quit school. The father called my mom and dad and said, "You know, he won’t go to school here. We want him to have an education. Will you take him in?"  And so that’s how he ended up here. And ended up going to Garfield.

It was interesting that second year because we had 6th, 7th, and 8th grade [instead of 7th, 8th, and 9th], so that the tone and the climate was different… The kids wanted to have a school dance, you know, all kids want to have a school dance. And so I decided, okay, how can I use this desire to mix the kids?  And I said, "Well, I’ll talk the principal into having a school dance but everybody has to dance."  So, for everybody to know how to dance, we have to teach them.  I talked with the boys’ PE teacher... He brought the boys into the girls' gym and the girls taught them the latest dances.... And what was nice was the black kids were teaching the white kids how to dance because each group had their different styles.  And so this way, I knew they wouldn’t laugh at each other either and that they could appreciate each other’s dances and not make fun of each other.  Because at that age, when they’re feeling awkward, the easiest thing to do is giggle or laugh and then that’s taken wrong.  So, we spent a couple weeks in the PE classes having the girls teach the boys and the black kids and white kids teaching each other. Then we’d mix the music because it was Motown and then it was other kind of music.

Ned, Hamilton student in the 1990s

The song I’m going to play is called the Hamilton school song:

All hail to thee Hamilton, our Hamilton.  The school that stands for truth and honor, the fairest school beneath the sun.  All hail to thee Hamilton, the school where loyal friendships never cease.  We are loyal, we are true to our colors gold & blue.  The Alexander Hamilton.