BOBBY ARDOIN Editor/Consulting Writer
On the same night exactly 60 years ago, they were wearing caps and gowns, clutching diplomas or possibly just happy to finally step away from their imagined imprisonments at Opelousas High School.
It wasn’t the same scene for those same graduates at the Evangeline Downs Events Center Saturday night as about 60 members of the 1964 OHS senior class, now visibly older and obviously less exuberant, mingled, laughed and reminisced for several hours with the former classmates that chose to attend.
The four years at OHS that they remembered was in a building with shining tiled floors, facing South Market Street.
Student life yearbook photos captured in black and white, show faculty and young men and women gazing into the camera lens attired in jeans and apparently pleased to display their white socks, tennis shoes and black loafers.
1964 was a significant year in American history, as just a month before these former Tigers graduated, Ford had introduced the iconic Mustang, the New York World’s Fair was scheduled to begin a month later and in February the Beatles had already made the first of their American appearances before the Ed Sullivan Show television audiences.
It was also a presidential election year, as Lyndon Johnson was elected to a first term seven months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas.
Several members of the 1963 Opelousas High athletic teams attended the Evangeline Downs event, including those from the first football team that played for head coach Richard Talbot.
Only one member of that original Talbot coaching staff is still living, as former OHS assistant and baseball coach Dale Pefferkorn was additionally remembered for his expertise as a classroom math teacher.
Charles Kessinger, a 1964 graduating class member, recalled the early pre-homeroom meetings beneath a tree in front of the school gym, where the boys in the class often gathered and discussed romances, acquisitions, plans for the weekend, teachers they feared or revered and the automobiles that were driven to school by some the senior boys from class.
Fran LaSalle remembered his days riding a new red and silver Honda Nighthawk motorcycle and his 1964 Pontiac GTO, the first of several with him behind the steering wheel..
Susie Leger Peck, the 1964 Miss OHS was also at the reunion with her husband and classmate A.T. Peck, while class Beau Roland Tauzin, also a pitcher on the baseball team, attended along with class Sweetheart Susan Pitre Rabalais and class president Jackie Perry Arceneaux.
Deceased members of the class were also remembered, including those that have died since the 55th class reunion.
Principal Payne Mahfouz appears on the opening page of the yearbook, and a glance and the memories further back further are there teachers like Mike Genovese, Vera Ruth Gilmore, Coach Bryant Goudeau, coach and future OHS school principal Leroy Ortego and Bernadette Klaus, chosen as 1964 Teacher of The Year.
View full photo gallery on St. Landry Now
