Front page of the Division Avenue High newspaper from November 1961

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You probably never wondered why our school newspaper was called The Flame. The reason, it has been conjectured, is that flames come out of a dragon's mouth and we were the Division Avenue Blue Dragons. Get it?

Thank you to Dennis Champney, class of 1966, for providing these scans from more than 50 years ago. Your blogger would like to see other early editions of the publication for possible inclusion here.

The Flame brought hot news to Division Avenue High's student body; April 1960 edition

Click on pages to enlarge

By FRANK BARNING

I don't remember when The Flame was first published, but by the time the April 1960 issue shown here was distributed, the staff had a nice mix of students from various Division Avenue High School classes.

My 1960 classmates sort of dominated activities in the first few years of the school, probably because we were always considered seniors since we would become the first graduating class. The staff of The Flame shows the beginning of passing the torch (pun intended) to the classes that followed. For example, two class of 1961 students had key roles, William Davis (publisher) and Pat Jacobson (business manager). The writing staff had a nice mix, too.

The library club story was written by Lillian Smith, class of 1962, who has contributed some of the best articles to appear in our blog. The students in the photo are Ira Selsky, class of 1960, and Iris Orenstein who was in the second graduating class. Ira and Iris, a coincidence?

The page of advertisements is interesting in that some of those companies were very familiar names in early Levittown and probably none still exist. Herbert Richheimer Inc. was a construction company that did a lot of the expanding of Levitt homes. Its signs were often seen in front of remodeling jobs.

Wilfred's Coffee Shop, in the Mays shopping center a short stroll from school, was owned by the parents of the class of 1962's Linda Kaiser. It was a popular after-school hangout. The Kaisers must have been patient souls because most of us had very little spending money.

The photo on the ad page is of 1961 classmates Kathy Rees and the late Mike Fitzgibbon. The telephone numbers start with either PE or WE. Can you remember what they stood for? PE was for Pershing and WE for Wells. You might also recall that many of our home phones were on party lines, a term that you no longer hear. Some of us listened in on the conversations of our neighbors. Hey, we didn't have the internet and we were too young to read juicy novels such as Peyton Place and A Stone for Danny Fisher.

And finally we come to the front page. The photo is from a talent show. The lad in the middle is Larry Bory, class of 1960. He is also listed in the story about scholarship winners.

About the show, Bory commented: "That was the Junior Show. I played handsome Larry Van Doren, the playboy in this 1920s sketch. To my right are Sue Giberson, (don't remember) and Corinne Norgren. To my left are Lilette Levy, (don't remember) and Fran Newman.

"There were at least a dozen songs and sketches. One was Carole Arneson as a drunken weather girl. Russ Green as a JD with leather jacket. Dewain Lanfear played his father. The final skit was a spoof on the football team coached by Jelly Gem (Corinne Norgren). All the team members were girls and the cheerleaders were guys, Russ, Dewain, Jim Anton and me."

As I recall, the dragon masthead was drawn by senior Connie Drakos whose art is seen throughout the 1960 yearbook. It's too bad that a flame isn't coming out of our mascot's mouth. Maybe Connie was like I was and didn't understand the subtle connection between dragon and flame.
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Thank you to Barbara Wittenberg Taylor, class of 1960, for sending us her copy of The Flame for inclusion here. Your blogger would like to see other early editions of the publication.

History lessons: Why was our newspaper was called The Flame and why are we the Blue Dragons?

By FRANK BARNING

It was always exciting when an issue of our student newspaper, The Flame, was delivered to Division Avenue. The only problem was that it only came out about three times a year when our high school was new.

I was the sports editor in the early years, the first place that I saw my byline. More than a thousand bylines would follow in the decades to come, but few were more thrilling to see than the ones in The Flame.

Why was it called The Flame? Duh, I had never wondered why. It never crossed my mind. We were called the Blue Dragons, right? I broached the subject with a classmate a year or so ago who asked, "What comes out of a dragon's mouth?" A flame. Such imagination.

It logically followed to ponder why are we the Blue Dragons? This I had wondered about. And after much discussion with other Division oldtimers, including faculty member Armand Tarantelli, this is the story as I have pieced it together. And it seems valid.

When the subject came up to create a nickname for the Division teams, one if not more of those involved in making the decision had gone to what was then known as Cortland State. It was, and probably still is, a teachers' college with an emphasis on physical education.

The Cortland nickname is the Red Dragons. It wasn't much of a leap to label us the Blue Dragons. My guess is that the Union Free School District physical education chairman, the late Hugh Jack, was the power behind the decision making. He was a Cortland man and is in the college's sports hall of fame.

FROM THE CORTLAND SPORTS WEBSITE
Hugh Jack, former baseball and football great at SUNY Cortland, was presented Cortland's “C” Club Hall of Fame Award at a ceremony held in his behalf in Tampa, Fla.
Jack is a member of the Class of 1948 at Cortland. A former resident of Rockville Center, Jack was honored by the New York State Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation, which awarded him its Distinguished Service Award. The Nassau County Basketball Coaches Association gave him their Special Service Award in 1970.
Jack was a physical education teacher and freshman football coach at Hofstra University in 1948, later joined the Levittown Public School System and retired in 1972 as district supervisor of physical education and athletics.
A varsity baseball and football player while at Cortland, he is the first president of the Cortland “C” Club and was the founder of Levittown’s Little League program, serving as its commissioner for two years. For 13 years, he was chairman of fund-raising for Operation Fitness in Nassau County.
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Our next blog post will be about The Flame, including photos of pages from the April 1960 issue.