Dear Editor,
Dear HMHS graduates/students:
This letter is directed to anyone who participated in the ugly display and desecration of the athletic field and surrounding property the night following graduation. When I learned about this news, I felt disgust and sadness.
Later in the day I shared this news with my 95-year-old mother. She had already heard from a friend and was also disgusted by it. She went on to describe her graduation from HMHS class of 1944. It was held in the high school auditorium one June evening. Early into the program there was a town/county air raid drill. The auditorium lights were turned off and black curtains were drawn. The school principal then read the names of the graduates using a flashlight.
My mom said the mood of the ceremony was low key and somber as many of the young men (boys) were headed off to war. Her older brother, HMHS class of 1942, was already in Europe with the 82nd Airborne. He later paid the ultimate price on Christmas Day 1944 in Bastogne, Belgium during the famous Battle of the Bulge.
A former HMHS football player, his name appears with a dozen or so other names on a stone plaque on the side of the high school’s stadium. My mom and I could only wonder what he and his fellow HMHS students would have thought about what some of you graduates did to the field and property the night of your own graduation.
I hope that as you go forward with your life you regret what you did, begin to take life more seriously, and have more respect for those who went through this high school before you and for those who will follow after you.
Jack Connor
HMHS class of ’74
Haddonfield Resident
