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WEEKs of March 17 & 24, 2008
@BFS! archives

50 Years Ago at BFS:
Nicknames, Hangouts, and Healthy Doses of Humor

by John R. Martin

The idea of being a teenager is the invention of the 20th century. Before the 1900s people the ages of 13 to 19 were expected to be working, getting married, and even having children. The word teenager was only first cited in 1941 in an issue of Popular Science monthly.

While the idea of adolescence was current in the early part of the 20th century, it was not until the 1950s that a generation of teenagers grew up in the manner that we deem normal today for young adults. In the 1930s the nation was overwhelmed with the Great Depression and in the 1940s teenagers were off to fight World War II, leaving little time for being teenagers.

The 1950’s, however, is a time remembered for its youth, the birth of rock and roll, the widespread emergence of television, and other pop culture phenomena. For people who did not live in the 1950s, their impressions of that decade most likely were formed through television shows like “Happy Days,” “Leave it To Beaver,” and more recent movies like Pleasantville. The question is: what were teenagers really like in the 1950’s?

The 1950s graduates of Brooklyn Friends School left behind their legacy in yearbooks and student publications like The Life. When we take a look through these source materials, we can see what these young adults were like and see how similar they are to teenagers today.

First off, nearly everyone had a nickname. Some of them include “El Pinko,” “Chub,” “Red,” “Lizagator” and “Moose.” As the decade progressed the yearbook became full of inside jokes and memories from every student. Many of these memories were about the students’ favorite hangout joints, usually food places like Terry’s or “The Shack” which served burgers across the street from the old Brooklyn Friends School on Schermerhorn Street.

Another favorite hangout spot was right inside the school. In 1950 a “rec” room was built, largely due to support from then Student Council President Rachel Adler. By the mid 1950’s with rock and roll exploding onto the world scene, a jukebox was added to the “rec” room so the students could listen to their favorite tunes. Today, most students listen to their favorite Fall Out Boy, Rihanna or T.I. songs on their own personal iPods, but students back then had to come together to enjoy their favorite Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker or Buddy Holly songs.

The students of the 1950s were big on extracurricular activities as well. One 1951 graduate, Camilla DeWitt, performed on Broadway while still attending Brooklyn Friends. Students were also very engaged in their ability to write and create their student newspaper, The Life. The Life featured whatever was going on at that time in and around Brooklyn Friends. Highly developed senses of humor could be seen through articles like the one entitled “Mass Suffering Predicted” in a December 17, 1951 issue. The story itself was actually about the seniors having to take their SATS on January 12, a task that anyone today can agree is pretty terrible.

The students of Brooklyn Friends also cared greatly about sports in the 1950s. New York was in a golden age of sports at the time. It was the last decade of three baseball teams competing in New York, including the famed Brooklyn Dodgers, who played near the school, the New York Yankees in the Bronx, and the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. Legends like Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays were all playing in New York City during this decade.

While the Brooklyn Friends baseball team was average during the decade, their boy’s basketball team was anything but. A string of years between 1953 and 1957 produced some of the best basketball ever played at the school. 1956 was the apex, with the team going undefeated and beating archrival Friends Seminary not once, but three times. Today that feat could be compared to Brooklyn Friends winning the New York State Varsity Championships in Basketball in 2003.

Being a teenager in the 1950s, though, was not as perfect as it has been portrayed in certain shows and movies. Some movies in the 1950s, like Blackboard Jungle with Glenn Ford and Rebel Without A Cause, with James Dean, depicted the difficulties of being a teenager during this trying time. The class of 1951 questioned themselves in the opening pages of their yearbook by asking “What are we like?” Growing up after World War II and in the beginning of the Cold War was no easy task. The class realized that their role of the future would be solving the problems that were putting their civilization as they knew it in jeopardy.

The world teenagers live in today is very similar to those of their 1950s counterparts. Their interests are similar. Today’s teenagers are living in a country that is trying to hold onto the title of world leader, which it first truly claimed in the 1940s and 50s. Teenagers today should look back at the lives of those young adults of the 1950s and see how they were able to shape their future during difficult times and become successful adults in the process.