THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 2, 1995 TAG: 9510310081
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOAN C. STANUS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
To the Maury High School class of 1926, Dorothy Heckler Marshall was ``The Perfect Flapper.''
She was tall and thin, and wore her hair bobbed. The hemlines on her sequined shifts shockingly touched just above her knees. And a long, dangling string of pearls accessorized every impeccably styled outfit.
She even had the perfect dance partner, Bill Moss, the strikingly ``debonaire'' fellow they called ``The Sheik.''
``She was just a doll ... and, boy, could she dance the Charleston,'' recalled classmate Eddie Wagner, now 88.
``I always thought I was a flapper, because I was an artist, but she really was. She was so pretty; they even put her in the yearbook as the perfect flapper,'' added Alice Walker Stallings, a classmate who still lives in Norfolk's Talbot Park.
But for Marshall, being a living symbol of the Jazz Age did not include spending wild nights drinking champagne, swinging from chandeliers and dancing on tabletops.
Instead, most Saturdays, the Maury senior and her friends would go downtown to a silent black-and-white movie at either the Loew's or Norva theater, and, afterward, head over to Nunnally's on Freemason Street for a 15-cent chocolate ice cream soda. That night, they would dance for hours to the sounds of big bands at either the Southland Hotel ballroom or at the Starlight Room in the Monticello Hotel. And, of course, for dinner, they always ended up at Child's Restaurant.
``Everyone went in there; you'd see everyone you knew,'' recalled Marshall, now 88, during an Oct. 25 gathering of the class, held at the Norfolk Airport Hilton. It was the 69th reunion for the Maury students, most of whom are now about 87 or 88 years old.
``We had so much fun back then,'' Marshall noted. ``Every Christmas, I always had three formal dresses, because there were so many dances to go to and I couldn't wear the same dress.''
``Oh, no,'' agreed Wagner, a retired telephone company manager. ``That just wouldn't have been right.''
Marshall, Wagner and 10 other of their classmates showed up at the reunion with a handful of spouses, children and siblings to relive memories, renew friendships and celebrate a time in their lives - and in the country - that was full of promise and innocence.
They graduated three years before the 1929 stock market crash, when bankrupted investors took suicidal leaps from windows. It was before the Great Depression of the '30s, before World War II and the atomic bomb.
``We were so innocent then that we thought if you kissed a boy, you'd get pregnant,'' joked Marshall, still impeccably attired and coiffed. ``People today don't know what fun is.''
``It was an optimistic time,'' agreed the class' yearbook editor, Barry Credle, now an 86-year-old retired IBM engineer who drove in from his home in Chapel Hill, N.C., for the reunion. ``We enjoyed life.''
For Herb ``Robby'' Robinson, attending Maury ``was one of the highlights of my life.''
A track star, Robinson held the state record for the 440-yard run for 30 years. He also held state records in the low hurdles and the half-mile, but ``they were broken in short time,'' he admitted.
``I made so many good friends at Maury,'' said Robinson, a retired airline pilot who grew up in Algonquin Park. ``There were always picnics and trips to go on. Once, the Navy even donated a tug to take us to Jamestown and Yorktown. It was just a good time to grow up.''
According to organizer Margaret Nicholls Gilbert, only about 20 of the 350 seniors from the Maury class are still known to be alive.
``So many more wanted to come,'' she said. ``But they just weren't able. It's just wonderful at our age we could still get so many to come.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by LAWRENCE JACKSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Dr. Milton Clark, far left, and his wife Minnie talk with Mary
Frances Compton and Herb Robinson at the Maury High class of '26
reunion.
by CNB