The American Journal sent a 1963 graduate of Gorham High School back to his alma matter recently to find out how schools have changed in the more than 40 years he has been away.

On a recent morning, as a tall, gray-haired man walked down a crowded hallway at Gorham high school, the teenagers around him turned to look. At age 60 and wearing a collared shirt, sweater and dress slacks, the man, Ron Boothby, stood out among students, who were wearing jeans, t-shirts and sneakers.

The school Boothby had know so well 40 years ago had changed drastically. Although the hallway itself hadn’t changed much, the students that filled it had. They wore different clothes, they listened to different music, and they drove cars to school.

Boothby was dressed similar to the way he would have dressed when he was in high school. The music of his youth – Chubby Checker, the Everly Brothers and Jerry Lee Lewis – are now unknown to many teenagers. And, of course, Boothby walked to school from his home on Main Street in Gorham Village.

“The physical plant and technology are worlds apart from what we had,” said Boothby, a 1963 Gorham graduate.

The high school has been expanded since Boothby attended. He estimated it was approximately five times the size of the school he attended.

“It was basically a one-hall school,” Boothby said.

The gymnasium where Boothby once played varsity basketball has been replaced by an auditorium. The new gymnasium, across the hallway from the auditorium, now bear the name of Boothby’s high school basketball coach – Dean Evans.

The library – now named after Boothby’s school librarian, Lorraine Stickney – is much larger. The desks in the library now have something Boothby didn’t use until decades after high school – computers.

In Boothby’s era, the school had no computers or televisions. Now most classroms have both.

In the past 46 years since Boothby was a freshman, the population of the school has swelled from about 300 to 900 now. There were 82 in his class and he was amazed at the expanse of the present school building.

“It’s huge. It’s a gorgeous place to go to school,” Boothby said.

Back to class

After a tour of the school with Principal John Drisko, Boothby shadowed a junior, Craig Belhumeur, to a couple of classes.

He went to homeroom with Belhumeur at 7:50 a.m. There, teacher Fred Adams took attendance, typing it into a laptop computer. It was unlike the days when teachers penciled in forms.

Limited to public address squawk boxes in 1959, morning announcements these days are often delivered over the school’s own TV system. There’s a daily trivia question. After hearing responses from students, teachers file answers by e-mail in a friendly competition among homerooms.

“It’s a fun thing to start off the morning,” Belhumeur said.

Classes began at 7:59 a.m., and Belhumeur stayed in his homeroom for chemistry. Before the chemistry class gathered around circular tables for a workshop, Boothby sat in a chair next to Belhumeur. “We’re invading your classroom this morning,” Boothby said to Adams.

“It must be funny coming back here after 42 years,” said junior Dustin Cole.

In chemistry class, students assisted Adams in a demonstration about molecules, using a clear, plastic bag filled with water. One student held the bag over his head, while another student lanced it with a stick. The bag, however, didn’t leak, demonstrating the cohesiveness of polymere strands of molecules.

Belhumeur said his teacher often made learning fun by involving the students in the lesson.

“Teachers get kids involved and make it more interesting today,” Boothby said after class, noting that his teachers did more lecturing than demonstrations.

Adams said classes are 45 minutes in length but Boothby remembered shorter ones. “I think classes are longer,” he said, jogging his memory.

Slide rules, graphing calculators and the basics

Besides modern day techniques and times, teaching tools are vastly different, too. Belhumeur said classrooms are equipped with whiteboards in addition to traditional black chalk ones. In math, Belhumeur said, teachers employ overhead projectors among teaching aids.

Boothby said he got a good education 42 years ago. “The curriculum was the basics – math, English, science and history,” he said. “We had a good science department. And Mrs. Ellis taught us how to write.”

Boothby said he had a fabulous math teacher, Clifford Holden, when he was in school. But students didn’t have the technology students have today.

“We had slide rules,” Boothby said. “There’s tons of stuff we didn’t have.”

Belhumeur figures solutions to math problems with a graphing calculator, which has a screen that displays equations. When Boothby was a student, he used a slide rule to make calculations.

“I have no idea what a slide rule is. I’ve heard people talk about it,” Belhumeur said.

Students today have technology courses, which include TV and movie production, and art. “Students need a well-rounded education today,” he said. “The thing that amazes me is the kids have drama and performing arts. They’re getting collegiate level training. It sure is different.”

Belhumeur and Boothby made their way through cramped hallways from the chemistry room to art class. He showed samples of his work to Boothby, who praised it. Boothby didn’t remember art as being available to him.

A forgetful age

One of Gorham’s art teachers, Chris Crosby, took time out to demonstrate for Boothby how a classroom computer keeps track of the school’s students. “Your name sounds familiar,” Crosby said to Boothby.

When he was a senior, Boothby was a starter on Gorham’s basketball team that won the state’s title. And Crosby’s mom, Diana (Waterman) Crosby, was a cheerleader. “That’s amazing. Diana’s son,” Boothby said.

Boothby, 60, said it was a shock at first for him to hear that her son is a teacher. “The problem is I don’t remember how old I am,” said Boothby, who said he still thinks he’s 25.

He said students are more sophisticated and are growing up faster these days. “They are not as naA? ?ve as we were. That’s for sure,” said Boothby. “Craig is a junior and he’s already looked at three colleges.”

Boothby went to Colby and checking out colleges was once relegated to the senior year in high school. But Belhumeur is looking at Providence College, Babson or Boston College. “Georgetown is my stretch school,” he said.

Sophistication and society changes are reflected in the style of school clothes. “We dressed differently. We had slacks and button-down shirts. The girls wore dresses.” You don’t see that anymore,” Boothby said.

He noticed that some of the girls and boys dressed alike, wearing sweatshirts and jeans. “Dress is more casual,” said Boothby. “That’s a good thing.”

Boothby’s generation referred to jeans as dungarees, which were for work and after school play. “My father got mad if I played basketball before I got home to change my clothes,” he said.

Belhumeur said today’s kids wear name brand jeans and most wear sneakers, costing about $75. “Everything is pretty expensive,” he said.

He said many wear hooded sweatshirts while others are more laid back and wear T-shirts. He said girls sometimes wear skirts but he’s seen only one dress all year. “It’s mostly casual,” Belhumeur said.

School spirit still runs strong at Gorham High School. With a big game against Bonny Eagle approaching, football players wore their jerseys in classes on Friday. “Tomorrow, they put on their pads and play,” said Boothby, who is pictured in his yearbook as the most school spirited.

Football is a relatively new sport at Gorham and Boothby said soccer was introduced at Gorham when he was a freshman. Speaking about athletics, he said there was a girls’ basketball team but there’s wasn’t much else for girls to compete in. He remembered a classmate, the late Mary Marsh, as a good athlete.

Cape Elizabeth was Gorham’s big rival in those days but others included Scarborough, Bonny Eagle and Yarmouth. “The team we wanted to beat the most was Cape Elizabeth,” Boothby said.

In sports, Gorham moved up to class A this year. Belhumeur didn’t name a particular school as their biggest rival so far.

Gorham graduation exercises weren’t always held in Portland. Gorham resident Maurice Whitten, a retired chemistry professor at the University of Southern Maine, remembered when commencement exercises were held at Gorham High School.

A different era

Life, not just school, was different when Boothby was a freshman and the United States has had 10 presidents since. There were no cell phones, and grandmothers were self-appointed guardians of the family telephone. “These kids don’t know about rotary dials,” Boothby said.

War was in the news then as it is now. Boothby said that there has been almost constant war from 1945, the year he was born, to the present.

“It’s a long way from Vietnam to Iraq. Advisors were sent to Vietnam when I was a freshman,” he said. “Did we talk about it? No I don’t think so. I don’t ever remember having a conversation in high school about Vietnam.”

The topic of war sometimes arises in history class but generally isn’t discussed among students in school now. “It’s not something a lot of people talk about,” Belhumeur said.

After school, kids hang out in the same building where their predecessors did. In the old days, it was the soda fountain in Barden’s Drug Store, which now houses the Gorham House of Pizza.

They also frequent Amato’s. But Mason’s, a store on Main Street near the entrance to Hannafords, was popular with kids long ago.

Scanning a sea of cars in the parking lot as he left school, he recalled earlier times when there weren’t 25 cars there. “The physical plant amazes me,” Boothby said. “It’s a good-sized school with a lot of talent,” Boothby said.

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