The Long March (No, Not Mao’s Famous One To Yunan Back In The Day)-From North Adamsville High To Atlantic Junior High-No Kidding

By Jack Callahan

Although I am a long-time supporter and granter of financial aid to this publication very seldom do I write an article or anything like that. Not my thing as it is for the likes of Sam Lowell, Seth Garth, Bart Webber, the late Pete Markin and others who I have known forever and went to junior high school, high school or both with back in the 1960s. A few weeks ago though Bart mentioned that it had been sixty years since we made the winter snow march from august North Adamsville High to our new digs at what was then called Atlantic Junior High and is now called the North Adamsville Middle School. He said I was the natural person to write a piece, a short piece to lure me in, about that experience which took on the epic proportions of the winter soldiers at Valley Forge or as the headline (created by Bart not me) the Mao rearguard action to Yunan out in the Chinese boondocks during the long civil war that took place in the 1930s and 1940s.       

Bart seemed to think because I was the lead guy in running the “troops” back and forth between the new and old locations that I had some special insights. I don’t but I agreed to tell this story because despite all the historical allusions to places like Valley Forge and Yunan the actual transfer from place to place was less than a mile. That apparently though is enough to have created some hoary legends some sixty years later about the trials and tribulations of the move. First off when we all graduated from sixth grade (most but not all of us from North Adamsville Elementary) we like several class generations before us headed to North Adamsville High which had been a six-year school going back to my grandmother’s time. World War II and the post-war baby boom (of which we are now in the tail end of in the generation game) gave the town a big spike in kids, too many for the high school and not good pedagogically as well to have basically twelve to eighteen- year olds under the same roof. The town fathers decided to build a junior high school for grades seven and eight to ease the overcrowding. By the vagaries of contracts and construction schedules the school was supposed to be ready in the fall of 1958 but for some reason was delayed until January of 1969. It was decided rather than wait until the next school year start to force march us then.       

This is where my part starts. Mr. Walsh, the headmaster of the new school (and former vice-headmaster at North Adamsville under the villainous Mr. Devens known as the “Angel of Death”) had previously been the junior varsity football coach. I had been the captain of the team and the star running back (which I would continue to be through senior year when we won the state class championships if I may brag a little now). So he “drafted” me to organize the students, including their lugging of school supplies in hand, when the day came. I in turn drafted Seth, Sam, the late Rick Rizzo, and a couple of football teammates to lead various sections (I did not draft Markin knowing even then while he was our wild man wizard for some stuff handling the real world was outside his domain). Unfortunately that day selected was cold as could be and it had started snowing. The whole thing turned into a small disaster and students kept slipping, losing books, and every other calamity. With some loses, some loss of material we eventually completed the trek before winter darkness set in. Naturally I was the guy who held the rear for stragglers. I will tell you this. Until this very day I am not sure whether there are still some wayward students from that trek looking for the new school. Some war story, huh.