By Julie Hill Lehr
Contributor

“We’re the class with all the tricks. We’re the spirit of ‘76!” That was one version of our class cheer. It is hard to find something that rhymes with six and makes sense as something to cheer about!

Fifty years ago, the Trenton High School Class of 1976 graduated from high school and went our separate ways. We graduated in a special year. It was the bicentennial, an election year and an Olympic year. We felt special. We were poised for the rest of our lives.

Until then, our whole world was in Trenton and Trenton High School. Oh, we had newspapers and TV, so we knew some of what was going on outside our small town, but it was oh so different then. We were insulated to a large degree. There was no internet, no social media, no cell phones and no VCRs. We watched movies at the Plaza or the drive-in outdoor theater. We hung out at the Lazy K, Pizza Hut or Frost Top. We bowled at Trenton Bowl or played pinball there. Sometimes we stopped at Cisco’s or Fair’s to get some ice cream. We shopped at JCPenney, Smith’s, Steins and Matco, and bought snacks at IGA or Hy-Vee. Our greatest form of entertainment was “riding around” up and down Ninth Street looking for our friends.

We loved the Bulldogs and went to their games — football, basketball, wrestling, track, tennis, golf and cross country. We supported girls’ and boys’ teams, and the community did too. We played softball or baseball in the summers. We were sure to go to the North Central Missouri Fair when it happened each August. We had summer jobs of all sorts. And each fall, we headed back to Trenton R-IX schools until that year.

We typically didn’t stray far from home. Sure, sometimes there was a shopping trip to Kansas City or perhaps a concert if we could talk our parents into it. But the majority of us found our world in Trenton.

We graduated. We went to college or trade schools, or found other ways to make a living. We branched out. Some of us went to Trenton Junior College, others to nearby state schools like Kirksville, Maryville, Warrensburg and even Springfield. Some of us became Tigers and went to the University of Missouri in the “big” city of Columbia. Well, big to us. And some went even farther away. Those were the truly daring ones. We became teachers, salespeople, businesspeople, accountants, engineers, journalists, hairstylists, HVAC specialists and carpenters. We worked in retail, became cooks, worked construction or honored our traditions and farmed the rich land of the Green Hills area.

We got married, had babies, became families and declared our independence on our own. We had bumps along the way: broken hearts; divorce; disease; the loss of children, family and friends; a global pandemic; work issues; money issues; and all kinds of issues, just like everyone who had come before us. We grew older, stockpiled knowledge and made our places in the world. We grew to be wise — at least wiser.

We survived.

In 2026, we are celebrating the semiquincentennial, the USA’s 250th birthday; we had the Winter Olympics, and in November the midterm elections will happen. The world is the same, but so different.

This alumni weekend, we come together again to remember our youth and all that went with growing up in Trenton, Missouri. I tell my friends today that I grew up in a Norman Rockwell painting, a small, rural town in north central Missouri, where we came of age in a safe, simpler world. Our yearbook theme was “Man’s Drive for Achievement,” and the Class of ‘76 worked hard on our achievements for the last 50 years. And we were successful, each in our own way.

I am so grateful for those years and so proud to be a member of the THS Class of 1976.

Happy golden anniversary THS Class of 1976! Onward!