BHS IN THE 60s
Margaret Stigers
Class of 1962
"Pat [Bieter] was the track coach. This is a true story. Our senior year he decided -- and there was no girls' track, there was no girls' anything, really. He said that if anybody was in track they could not date while they were in track. Now think what happens while track is [going] on. May Queen, prom. They [the track runners] couldn't date, they couldn't go to dances, they couldn't do anything because he made that rule. And he didn't think it through and so Roberta Gleeson, my bestest buddy She and I we just went, 'I can't go to the prom because I'm dating so-and-so.' So we went to the Albertson's and we bought two of the four things of toilet paper, and we snuck over to his house -- he lived on 8th St. -- and we toilet-papered his house, and then we went home. And the thing that he did -- he'd come into [history] class and it was fifth period, on the second floor, and so we'd go in and he'd say 'Okay so this is what happened at my house,' and he'd talk about his kids, what they did; his wife, what she did; we knew everything. So we just sat there waiting, because we knew he was gonna [say], 'Someone came to my house last night, they [toilet papered my house]' -- he didn't say a damn word. So we get out, and I go, 'We gotta get more people.' It was just the two of us, and we didn't want to get in trouble, but we knew, that we had something we had to do. So we asked the other cheerleaders, you know, we asked all these other people, the drill team, and everybody brought two four packs each, and there were like, twenty of us. And we went and toilet papered the front of his house, the back of his house, you know, all the bushes, his car, and then we went home, we went to bed, we got up and went to school. Fifth period, we all go in and sat down -- he did not say a damn word. So we said, 'That's it.' We [then] called the Borah cheerleaders, we called [all] our friends -- there were 60 of us. We got two full cases. We toilet-papered the trees and the bushes and then the next day we found out they didn't live in that house. We were a block off. Swear to God!"
Montie Ralstin
Class of 1965
“I remember being at a dance one night in the Boise High gym. One of the guys there had been talking about how some of the guys had gone hunting that day and he happened to be our class president. I said, ‘Hey Dean,’ and he described where they went [hunting], so we got to talking — even with our dates standing there — and scheduled a hunting trip for the very next morning. We all got up early the next morning and went on this hunting trip that we spontaneously planned the night before.”
Arlene Yinger
Class of 1965
"Yeah, so we used to go [to the football games], and I mainly loved to go because during half time the band always played [and I was in the band]. But besides that, I had a boyfriend that went to Borah, and he was a senior the same year I was, and we always had this [competitive] situation where we were like, “Ok.” We would always have this big argument about who was gonna win the [the Boise vs. Borah game] that year. So I got to really lord it over him [when we won]."
Craig Davis
Class of 1966
Photo by Easton Anderson.
“In my junior year I took a course in marketing. My teacher's name was Mr. Milligan. Marketing was about selling, you know. Towards the end of the semester he said, ‘Okay for your assignment I’m going to have each one of you give us a presentation as if you were working in a retail environment, showing people products that are of interest.’ I had, at that time, done a lot of bird hunting. We lived in East Boise and I went pheasant hunting and used my shotgun a lot, so I asked Mr. Milling, ‘Well can I give a presentation of my shotgun, in a sporting goods store setting?’ And he thought about it for a second and he said, ‘Yeah, that’d be okay.’ So I got on the school bus and rode it to school with my shotgun in the case and brought it into school and put it in my locker. And right before class I went to my locker and got my shotgun out, took it in, and I did my thing. I had brought shotgun shells I had taken — I should’ve told him this, but I had forgotten. They weren’t really bullets, they were empty cartridges, and I just put them in there and took them out, and I could see him getting a little uncomfortable, but it wasn’t a real problem back then. There wasn’t terrorism or an issue with guns like there is today.”
Class of 1967
Thomas Cantrell
“Around Christmas time, [my friend] Roger, my brother and I went into the school, accessing it from the roof. We took a fire escape and got up on the roof of the school and took a cover off and had an opening and we descended down into the rafters and into a trap door. There were janitors buffing floors, and we had to be careful not to get caught. We went down to the main level, and there was a Christmas tree, in front of the auditorium. We were taking it up the stairs, Roger and I, and John [my brother] had his arm around the base, trying to pick up the [ornaments]. We were leaving a little bit of tinsel there, there was a trail. We took it up into the top of the auditorium, stuck it into the projection room above the auditorium, up through the roof, and it was back down in the main hall Monday morning. Nothing was ever said about it. We didn’t get caught."
Twilla Cobler
Class of 1968
“When I was in there, we [the girls] didn’t even play basketball in our PE class. We just ran laps. We never played a game of basketball. They took us outside a lot and had us run around the track. [In the winter] we would do stuff inside. Back then the first five or so minutes of the darn class they would come down the line and would check out your shoes, your shoelaces, your fingernails, your PE outfit had to be pressed, and they would grade you on that for part of your PE grade. So everything had to be [perfect]. You would have to clean everything. And back then, of course, you were required to shower.”