Senior Reflections: Dancing in Big D and Lancer Life
By Peter Langlois, Class President �65
It�s Monday morning and I�m drinking coffee from a brand-new Lakenheath High School mug, and thinking about this weekend and days at Lakenheath some forty years ago. Thanks to all who worked so hard pulling this together. A special thanks to all Lancers, who made my wife, Marsha, feel so welcome that she lasted through the entire Saturday night dinner and dance, including Tom Grove�s fabulous slide show, which included so many of the wonderful songs from our era at Lakenheath. I�m not saying Marsha was knocked out to the extent of jealousy, but she did say she would have killed for a senior class trip to Rome! And she did spend about three hours talking with Syd Falk at dinner. She must be Lancer material!
As for me, seeing classmates for the first time in forty years, only made me want to see them again. It�s not about recapturing youth, but rather going back to the roots that have driven our behavior for so many years. Being a Lancer is special. I hope you enjoy my reflections. It was an honor to have been your class president.
What was it like to go to high school in England during the early and mid sixties? Was it different? Was it special? Let me take you back in my memory book. Arriving in England, I was pretty shocked when I found out Elvis was still King and that Cliff Richards and The Shadows were the most popular group. No BeachBoys, No Jan and Dean, No American Bandstand. That was quite different from McGuire AFB, 60 miles from both NYC and Philly.
How things can change in an instant. One night on the London Palladium Show a group with a left-handed guitar player-vocalist named Paul McCartney became the rage, along with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, when they sang �Love Me Do� and �P.S. I Love You.� Revolutionizing music, the Beatles went on to express the social issues of our times, eventually leading the so-called British Invasion across the Pond into the U.S. No doubt the Globe truly shrank on our watch when The Beatles first sang on The Ed Sullivan Show and then later in New York�s Shea Stadium.
One of The Beatles� big social issues was diversity. Even today diversity is a topic of much debate, yet we lived and breathed diversity at our School. Thrown together in a boarding school situation, we found reliance on one another was essential. Sometimes I think we may have raised one another. I do not remember diversity ever being an issue at Lakenheath.
So one could say our time was different and special. It was ground breaking. Yet for Lancers it was a trip to the Day Room to check out the jukebox for the State side tunes that seemed to matter the most. We wanted to know the latest dance. Remember The Swim? The Monkey? You see, we were all in this great place together, but sometimes it was lonely, too.
Looking back, what made Lakenheath special for me was all of you. I couldn�t have made it without you. As I looked around this weekend I thought how great it would be to go back in time to stop and smell the roses, for they were so sweet. While I can�t do that, I can thank you now for all the great memories.
I learned the greatest lesson of my life at Lakenheath: Surround yourself with great people. If you look in our Yearbook, you�ll see that I look like such a big success, really getting a lot of credit for what amounts to being a figurehead. Being a Class President really means you trust other people to work hard and make you look good. Some might think you�re a big decision-maker, but that�s just baloney!
I even brought this great Lakenheath concept into my marriage to Marsha, nearly twenty-five years ago, and it�s still working today. We agreed that I would make only the Big Decisions. Three children, two homes, and numerous cars later, I�ve yet to make that first so-called Big Decision. At Lakenheath I learned trust�trust in classmates and teammates, trust in your fellow man, and, perhaps most importantly, trust in your wife!
Forty years later I am different on the outside, but still a Lancer on the inside. I think that�s a very good thing. I know I could search the world over and never find what we had at Lakenheath. As the English would say: We were in good company. We were in each other�s hearts, and even in each other�s arms. Let�s continue that fellowship always. Cheers!