Small pirate a big symbol for Class of '57

As the class dedicates a mascot to Pasco High School, 50 years of memories come spilling forth.

By MICHAEL KRUSE, Times Staff Writer
Published August 10, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Michael Kruse | Times] Pasco High School principal Patrick Reedy puts a pirate statue on the glass case in the front lobby of the school as members of the Class of 1957 look on. The Class of '57 donated the statue.

DADE CITY - "Well," said William White, Pasco High School Class of 1957, "I can remember when it was dirt streets and banana trees.

"We used to go to the movie house. The train station was through the parking lot. I was in the National Guard back then and we caught the train there to go to Alabama for our training there. It's really changed a whole lot."

This was Thursday morning at Pasco High.

" 'Cause back then," White went on, "most everybody knew everybody.

"That's not the case anymore.

"No.

"Huh uh.

"But I worked from the time I was 11 years old with the public - I worked at the service station - so I seen a lot of people."

"We wore dresses," classmate Frankie Sumner Goldsby said. "I remember wearing jeans in junior high. I don't remember wearing them during high school.

"We lived in an orange grove," she said, "and I loved the orange blossoms when the trees were blooming.

"Oh yes.

"Beautiful."

Not long ago, two members of the Class of '57, Melton Godwin and Bobby Williams, saw a small pirate statue in an antique store in Lakeland. The Pasco mascot is the pirate. This one had an eye patch and a peg leg and a saber for a sword and a hook for a hand.

Godwin and Williams bought it and donated it to the class.

This June, on a weekend in the middle of the month, 56 of the 114 graduates from '57 got together here for their 50th reunion. "We did the whole weekend together," Judith Lindsay Ide said.

The pirate was there too.

Then the class donated it to the school.

The dedication was Thursday.

White was there, and so was Goldsby, and Ide, and also James Harris, Eva Heufel Harris and Martha Jackson Fair. They milled about in the main lobby in the front of the school.

"Our oldest grandson graduated last year," White told some of the others. "We got two more that's gonna come through here pretty soon."

"Guess who I talked to yesterday?" Ide said to everybody. "He didn't come to the reunion because he was real ill. He said he had had part of his colon taken out."

Sitting on one of the couches in the lobby was a school-age boy wearing a gray T-shirt. On the front of his shirt was a picture of some toilet paper. The words on his shirt said THAT'S HOW I ROLL.

Pasco principal Pat Reedy came over for a short ceremony. He put the pirate on the top of a glass case with trophies inside from the school's track, wrestling, soccer and softball successes.

The members of the Class of '57 took snapshots and talked about how small all these cameras had gotten and looked up at the pirate.

"It looks like it was just made to be there," Goldsby said.

"He belongs here," Ide said.

"That's a neat deal right there," White said.

They said their goodbyes and left. Reedy stayed in the lobby for a minute or two and reached up with both hands to the plaque on the bottom of the statue and tried to push down the ends. He said he might have to screw it on there.

"This glue," he said, "might not stay."

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 813 909-4617.

[Last modified August 9, 2007, 21:12:24]