Walter Allen "Hoolie" Bowermaster 1932-2014

I have my former classmate Eunice M. (Ward) Brown to thank for passing along this program of the memorial service for Walter Bowermaster whom we both remember even though he was two years ahead of us at St. Charles High School.

Because he was three years older, Walter was not a close friend of mine, but he was one of a number of older boys we younger boys respected, because in those days they were worthy of respect.  The commonplace social plague known today as bullying was both rare and short lived in those days at St. Charles High School, as I recall..  Older boys were generally charged by their parents and other adults in the larger community with the responsibility of "looking out" for younger boys.  To behave otherwise, was, well, simply disgraceful.

Regardless of your class, however, in the "high school" of St. Charles in those days, we were generally a closely knit group with relatively little class "rank," with perhaps the exception of seniors, of course.  Walter's fellow juniors included (as pictured in the yearbook) Jack Dempsey, Ruth Tuck, Jimmy Horton, Neva Graves, Doris Dawson, Charles Bisswanger, Leo Padgett, and Charles West.

This same year I was in the freshman class with twenty-one classmates.  Sixteen of us would graduate the spring of 1953. - DPW