First, let me say that all of the photos that you see here, plus many more, are being made available on a CD-ROM, at much higher resolution, so if you're interested in making hard copies, don't take the images from this page. I'm not putting all of the photos, or the full resolution versions, on the website because I'd run out of disk allocation at my ISP, and you'd be downloading the page for the next week.
Second, Michelle Porter visited the school just before the reunion, and was given a tour, and sent me a whole bunch of photos of the school as well. I'm only using one here, because my camera has a higher resolution, but all of her photos, along with her comments, are also on the CD-ROM.
So, for those of you who haven't been back since 1970, here is Williams School as it exists today:
Grove Street side of the school, from the left. Note the wheelchair ramp. Although you can't see it from this view, the Kindergarten entrance on the left side of the building is no longer in use.
Grove Street side of the school, from the right. Directly behind me in this photo is a flat spot where the big Lasell building on the hill used to be. Both the building, and the hill, are gone now.
Didn't believe me, did you?
The new wing. It is located where the old sunken basketball court used to be. It is quite a bit more modern than the old parts of the school, and even has an elevator.
The old playground on top of the hill at the back corner of the field is gone. Now there is a modern playground at the corner by the parking lot entrance. I dunno; these new playgrounds are OK, I guess, but there's nothing to really bust your teeth on.
"They say, even after 30 years, late at night, when the wind comes whipping across the playground, you can hear the wailing of, (and smell) the Lost Souls of all those cartons of milk going sour in the rear hallway!"
Which sign is right? Or is there really a difference? Mrs. Wyman's kindergarten room is now a 5th grade classroom; in a reversal from our time, the earlier grades are on the second floor, and the higher grades are downstairs.
There are some staff positions that back in our day we just never could have conceived of in our wildest imaginations.
The library; photo by Michelle Porter. Explain to your kids that those cabinet-looking things are called "card catalogs", and work much like a computer to let you reference books, but much, much slower and less efficiently. I wonder if the staff still have to "dial" their rotary phones, too?
This is actually the "new new" library, because for many years the library had been moved from beside the principal's office to the back half of the auditorium. The auditorium has now been restored to it's original size, and the library moved to it's third, present location.