Every Tuesday, some Austin High students from the 1950s gather to chat. KVUE caught up with some of the former cheerleaders and prom kings/queens from 70 years ago.
AUSTIN, Texas — It’s almost dinnertime at Austin’s Westminster Senior Living Community in Central Austin. Every Tuesday, right before dinner, a special group of residents meets to chat. Afterall, they have a lot in common. Each of them graduated from Austin High School, anywhere them 70 to 80 years ago.
Carlene Johnson Jenkins graduated from Austin High in 1954. She was a popular student who got good grades, and she was a cheerleader. They called them yell leaders back then.
“My uniform was made out of corduroy, and we were yelling at football games in September,” Jenkins recalls. “It went down to my ankles, and we had Oxford shoes. We didn’t tumble or anything. We just yelled.”
Fellow Austin High cheerleader Mike Roche graduated in 1953 and still has the uniform he wore.
“I’d much rather have played football,” Roche said. “But I couldn’t run across the field without panting and running out of breath of falling down or something like that. I was not coordinated.”
Jenkins said one of the highlights of the Austin High football season back then was the annual bonfire held near the center of town.
“It was really a big thing for us to be able to have that at Pease Park,” she said.
Both Jenkins and Roche went on to graduate from the University of Texas at Austin, raised families and had successful careers, Jenkins in retail and Roche in finance and stock brokerage. He credits much of his success in life to the Austin High teachers who taught his classes more than 70 years ago.
“We had wonderful teachers,” he said. “They were there because it was a commitment. That was a calling for them, and they were wonderful people. I can’t think of one of them that I wouldn’t enjoy having dinner with today.”
Martha McAdams Vertrees is among the most senior members of the group, graduating from Austin High in 1948. She said one of the most important lessons she learned from her life is the importance of caring about others.
“People are what you remember,” Vertrees said. “Things come and go. People are forever.”
Valuable lessons learned from living a long and happy life. Lessons that are as important today as they were back then when their world was much younger.