530600  This picture has created a lot of interest and comments.

There is a strong feeling it was taken in Miss Enright's 8th grade class at Plunkett Junior High-- probably at the end of the school year before we went to South Junior High.
First row: Tony Adornetto,  Bob Bascom, ?.
Second Row: ?  , Joe Metallo, Bobby Budnitz, Larry Andrews
Third row: Steve Bates, ?, ?, Peter Brigham, and Bobby Buckbee.

Here are comments from Bobby Budnitz: She was our English teacher.  Her room was on the first floor in the middle of the hallway at the front (the First St. side) of Plunkett.  At Plunkett, the kids were originally all sorted into homeroom classrooms by alphabet, and I was in the alphabetical class with the A-B-Cs. As I recall there were 8 home rooms, and each home room group stayed together as we went from classroom to classroom taking English, history, math, music, etc. Anyway, about 3-4 months into the seventh grade, they took all the kids in the L-M-N room and dispersed them among the other 7 homeroom groups -- that's how Joe Metallo came to our A-B-C classroom with a few others. That shuffling allowed the authorities to take out a few low performers, or kids with learning problems, from each of the other 7 homerooms and concentrate them in one classroom 'track' to give them special attention.

Anyway, as you can see from the names, this is a group of the boys from the A-B-C homeroom group.   Plus Joe Metallo, who was with us as described above. Bob Babillis was in that class, and I think he might be the kid on the left end of the second row, or what you have called the first row. But I am not sure of that.

Another idea:  Is one of those boys Tommy Avalle?

I recall that in eighth grade we had some sort of election for class officers, or student council, or something.  Not sure what.  Anyway, Peter Brigham ran and won, but I recall supporting Joe Metallo who was running against Peter.  I recall specifically making a poster that said something like 'Vote for Joe for a better school', more or less.  [I had known Joe from Dawes, and Peter Brigham had come from Redfield and wasn't such a close friend then.]  I then took that poster home and it hung in our basement for a couple of decades until I tossed it unceremoniously in say the 1970s or 1980s, and when I did so it never occurred to me to try to contact Joe to offer it to him. And I bet that now Joe would offer me a ten thousand dollar bill for that poster.  Right Joe?  (It's easy to say, now in 2010, the object being lost for so long.)  That 'election' was at Plunkett in the eighth grade, in my memory.

Perhaps some others might remember these people.
Posted By: Thanks to Janet Allison Messing and Bobby Budnitz - 03-28-2010
Views: 3608