ALSTEAD, N.H. – The last class to graduate from Vilas High School before the historical Alstead institution closed its doors for the final time was the Class of 1966, 20 fresh-faced seniors who together experienced the cultural shift that defined the 1960s in America.
What began as a quintessential, homespun youth spent outdoors, playing sports, riding bikes, and swimming in swimming holes, took a swift left turn into premature adulthood for many students who volunteered to serve their country in Vietnam, and who began to experience the tumult of the civil rights and anti-war movements.
Thirteen alumni remain and will gather this month to celebrate their 60-year class reunion with a June 27 dinner at the Sumner House in Charlestown. They share a fondness for their time in high school that continues through today. Over the past 60 years, the group has managed to get together for 10 class reunions.
Alumnus and former U.S. Navy medic Rob Crocker relayed, “We were the last first-grade class in the old school on Prospect Street, the first first-grade class in the new Alstead Elementary School (now Alstead Primary School), and the last senior class in Vilas High School (now Vilas Middle School) before the new Fall Mountain Regional High School opened in the fall of 1966. Five of us remained together throughout all 12 grades in the Alstead school system.”
“We are like an extended family,” said 78-year-old alumnus David Dodson, a musician and acupuncturist currently residing in Maine. “We knew each other well and have kept in touch over the years.”
“I remember the Vilas High School atmosphere as kind, respectful, and fun,” Dodson recalled. “We owed a lot of the general good vibes to our principal, Dan Metcalf.”
Daniel M. Metcalf, who passed away in 1992 at the age of 91, had been a teacher, coach, and the principal of Vilas High School from 1935-1966. “Mr. Metcalf,” as the students called him, was a beloved leader, mentor, and community member. “Even people who graduated 20 years before still called him ‘Mr. Metcalf,’” said Dodson.
The Daniel M. Metcalf Scholarship was founded in 1960 to support continuing education for students of the Fall Mountain region. The scholarship is still awarded by the Fall Mountain Scholarship Committee.
“Daniel Metcalf ran a tight ship at the school,” said Maggie Gacek, class historian. “In later years, we were glad for the discipline and education we had.”
Gacek, who served in the U.S. Army for two years and eight months, recalled being taught the importance of sportsmanship and to respect rival teams in high school. Thinking of her time in Vietnam and the seven classmates who have died since, Gacek reflected, “Life has been a great leveler.”
The classmates agree that something about the mixture of time and place inspired a strong feeling of nostalgia and fellowship. Alstead and the surrounding towns were so small during the 1950s and 1960s that they supported each other and created a tight-knit community bolstered at the time by milling, mining, and agriculture.
As Gacek put it, “It was the end of an era.”
Crocker agreed. “We lived through some significant, world-changing events.”
But Crocker recalled his days growing up on River Street in Alstead, where, he said, “I enjoyed playing basketball…[and] swimming at Vilas Pool and various swimming holes in the Cold River. I have great memories of our annual fall school parades and fairs.”
Dodson said the high school band and school majorettes marched in the parade, and each class built a float and made food and cider with apples picked from local farms. One of the teachers rode a tall bicycle from the 1800s.
During his final three years of high school, Dodson formed a musical group playing folk songs from Peter, Paul and Mary, and the Kingston Trio. They performed a few times a year, mostly in annual senior shows or “hootenannies,” as they were sometimes called.
Dodson played guitar, accompanied by classmate Denny Wilson on washtub bass, and “about seven girls who all made and wore matching dresses. We were known as the Singing Sophomores, the Jolly Juniors, or the Swinging Seniors, depending on the year.”
Dodson will attend the gala with his wife of 15 years, Mary Kate Small. This will be the second reunion for Small. In his song “Farthest Field,” from the album “Harbors of Home,” Dodson reminisces about a farmhouse that sat atop a peak from which one could see the mountains of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Canada.
Dodson wrote, “Oh, my dear friend I truly love / To hear your voices alifted up in the radiant song / Though through the years we all have made / Our separate choices we’ve ended here where we belong.”