More info on Salisbury High photo

SALISBURY - Yvette (Mojon) Bredbenner called from her home in Houston, Texas, (where she lives near her son Lee Bredbenner), to share further information about the Salisbury High School photo that was printed in the March 8 edition of The Lakeville Journal.

Mrs. Bredbenner, who is 85, was a graduate of the class of 1939, and came to the high school in 1935.

Although the reproduction of the photo was too small for her to make out all the faces, she did recall that the photo included students at the high school, as well as students in grades seven and eight. The two large banks of windows on the front of the school building, she said, were in the rooms for the sophomore class (the southern side windows) and the seventh grade (northern side).

The class of 1939 was the last to attend high school in Salisbury; the following year, students went instead to Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village.

"We called it ‘going down’ to the high school," Mrs. Bredbenner recalled � but hastily added that the expression didn’t imply the new Falls Village regional school was inferior. It was a geographic reference, she explained.

Mrs. Bredbenner listed some of the teachers who might have been in the photo. Mrs. Miner was the seventh-grade teacher, she said; Miss Allen was the freshman homeroom teacher and also the English teacher; Miss Crofton, the French teacher (who might also have been the eighth-grade homeroom teacher); Mr. Smith was a business teacher (in charge of helping students master shorthand and typing) as well as the junior homeroom teacher; Mr. Fitts was the math teacher and sophomore homeroom teacher (he was also, at a later date, the husband of the senior class homeroom teacher; Mrs. Bredbenner could not recall that teacher’s maiden name, but she believes that she became a teacher at the Falls Village high school).

Mr. Loring, a World War I veteran, was the school’s principal and also taught science classes.

Salisbury High School had excellent basketball teams, Mrs. Bredbenner recalled. The boys and girls teams both went to the state championships ("I was the manager of the girls team," she said).

Two of the taller girls in the photo were probably the Berti sisters, who were stars of the girls team. Some of the taller boys in the photo might have been basketball standouts Bob Penta, John Hahne, Henry Belter and Dick Gottliebsen.

Also on the girls team was Flo Tompkins, who might still live in North Canaan (but has now taken her husband’s name, which Mrs. Bredbennner said she doesn’t know).

The teams were coached by the recreation director, Mr. Hemmerly.

Although she attended Salisbury High School, Mrs. Bredbenner did not attend the Salisbury elementary school. She went to the one-room school in Amesville, on Housatonic River Road (now a private residence).

"I lived on Stillwater Farm, when it was owned by Joseph R. Swan," Mrs. Bredbenner said. "We lived in the first house on the left, when you turn onto Housatonic River Road from Route 44. That house was built for my parents, James and Rose Mojon."

The Mojons moved out of Salisbury when the Swans sold their farm to John Herndon, but Mrs. Bredbenner returned often (as she still does) to the Salisbury area. For a while, she was a French teacher at the University of Connecticut in Torrington and at Salisbury Central School.

"I used to have to rush from the UConn campus back to Salisbury to teach my class two or three times a week," she said.

Although travel has become more difficult for her now, she said her son still visits the Northwest Corner. And of course, she still subscribes to The Lakeville Journal.

� Cynthia Hochswender