He had recently gone through a box of his late mother’s belongings and found the program for the original Eastmont Park School dedication program May 15, 1957, so he posted pictures from that, too.
His posted class photos run from 1957-64.
“I started getting responses from classmates and a dialogue started,” he said. “I heard from people I hadn’t heard from since school. They started asking questions about the guy in the top row, or what happened to so-and-so, and the ball really got rolling,” said Royer.
As former students began to identify classmates in the homeroom photos, “some decided to take it on as a project.”
Several commented on a shirt Royer wore in his sixth grade picture.
“It was colorful, with different shades of green,” he said. “One said that it was a ‘good thing this is a black and white photo — I think that shirt would blind us in color.’ ”
They asked each other who the teachers were, and one was recalled by many for a class project.
“She taught us about the stock market, (and I) don’t know why that stuck with me like it did, but I checked the stocks I bought with my fake money for years after that,” said one classmate.
Another remembered a music project he didn’t like because “we made instruments and I had a coffee can for a drum.”
And, under a stairwell photo from the dedication program, a former student wrote, “I accidently rolled a piano down those stairs (and) still remember every single teacher from there to the principal’s office sticking their heads out of their doorways.”
Royer and his classmates were in eighth grade when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and many shared memories of that day: “I’ll never forget it — I had a hall pass to go to the restroom and got the news in the hallway”; “I was in art class when Kennedy was shot”; “The teacher got a TV somehow and everyone was in shock and some people were crying.”
Royer, like many of his classmates, no longer lives in Dayton and hasn’t seen the new Eastmont building or even knew there was one, but now plans to visit. He’s currently executive director of the Butler County Mental Health Board and lives in Hamilton.
As a result of his Facebook venture, “folks want to get together and have planned a mini reunion March 12. It wasn’t a goal, but I like what’s happening — it’s seemed to be fun for people, and for me.”
Contact this columnist at virgburroughs@gmail.com.
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