School District
The year was 1954 and the senior class at Sequim High School undertook an aggressive campaign to help pass a bond for a new gym (the present day gym). Judy (Evanson) Markley recalls groups of students walking up and down the streets of Sequim, talking with business owners, asking for their support. This successful campaign earned the class a plaque with all their names listed on it and it was to hang in the gymnasium they helped build.
Flash forward to 2011, when Bill Huntington (SHS 1954 class president) traveled from his home in Port Orchard to Sequim to attend a high school basketball game. Huntington wanted to point out the plaque to his grandson, but they were unable to locate it. Huntington made inquiries, but no one seemed to know about the plaque that had been dedicated almost 60 years before. Huntington decided to make it his mission to find the missing plaque.
In the spring of 2012, Huntington and Markley, a classmate, attended a school board meeting in Sequim to make an appeal to board members, to determine the whereabouts of their class plaque. Board president Virginia O’Neil assured them a thorough search would be made, and if it could not be found, she would see that it was replaced.
The artifact could not be located. When it became apparent it was lost, O’Neil took steps to have a replacement made. Before it was completed, however, news came that Huntington had died.
On Oct. 25, members of the Sequim High School Class of 1954 met at the Mariner Café for a monthly committee lunch meeting, with Mary Ann Huntington and Bill Huntington’s daughter Christy Brady representing its deceased classmate. Sequim School District representatives Marilyn Walsh, administrative assistant to the superintendent, and Patsene Dashiell, director of Communications, came to present the new plaque.
The plaque reads: “Congratulations to the Class of 1954. As winners of the Vote Pledge Contest, you helped lead the way in encouraging the people of Sequim School District 323 to vote for the bond propositions that enabled the district to construct this fine facility.”
“Joanne Almaden, Robert Beale, Henry Carleton Bigelow, Phyllis LaVerne Bower, Carol Maxine Brown, Barbara Clara Burton, Harvey Everett Clayton, Janice Eline Cook, Coleen Fay Drake, Judith Rae Evanson, Annette Frazier, Pat Gordon, Barbara Haspel, William H. Huntington, Bonita Jo Johnson, Michel Joslin, Sharon Rae Joy, Arlene Catherine Karlson, Marjorie Kilby, Nellie Lightheart, Virginia Nell Livengood, Barbara Jean Loucks, Robert Norris Lynch, Ardella Machenheimer, Thomas Eugene Markley, Leonard Midkiff, Dorothy June Mulvahill, JoAnn Neil, Ruby Margaret Nelson, Elvin Walter Parrish, Donald Charles Peabody, Dick Percival, Peggy Peterson, Jo Ann Peterson, Dorothy Roberts, Dorothy Sampair, Mary Schenck, Karen Beate Schmuck, Larry Eugene Schmuck, Shirley Lorraine Schmuck, Robert Lee Staeger, Colleen Audrey Stanley, Jean Marie Stone, Shirley Ann Taylor, Stephen Francis Vause, Gordon Welk, Barry Dean Wheeler, Jack Lee Williams and Nancy Willis.”
Senior Class Officers
President — Bill Huntington
Vice President — Nancy Willis
Treasurer — Elvin Parrish
Representative — Judy Evanson
Secretary — Ruby Nelson
Advisor — Mr. Schade.”
The new plaque is to be hung in the Sequim High School gymnasium.
In the summer of 2014, the Class of 1954 celebrates its 60th reunion.
