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I’m sure most of the students here at Whippany Park can say that they’re used to seeing the same old school building each day, used to seeing Chromebooks, used to seeing projectors on ceilings, and used to seeing people whip out their phones. Of course, we know it wasn’t always like that. However, we may not know exactly how different it was it then compared to now.

Whippany Park was founded and started its first year in 1967, but the oldest yearbook available is from its second year between 1968 and 1969. Before we talk about the school itself and how it’s changed, let’s review a brief the culture and important events during the school’s first year.

At the beginning of the 1967 school year, it had already been 12 years since the beginning of the Vietnam War and people began to protest against the government’s decision to keep sending young men out to fight in the jungle. Race riots were also occurring in the U.S. as African Americans were protesting for their rights and being infamously fired upon by firemen and police officers, some as close to home as Newark.

The culture of this America, although caught up in many events such as these, was quite relaxed. Many people were into the growing rock and roll genre of music. A good way to state the public ideals during the time can be pretty easily summed up in three words: free love and rock and roll.

Now let’s focus on the school itself. The yearbook does not provide a map of the school, but based on a few photos from inside and outside it’s clear that the building has the same structure as it does today. There are around 206 seniors compared to 183 in 2017. There are also around 62  teachers (not including other staff or the principal) compared to 90 teachers in 2017. The school also features many activities that we don’t have today, such as judo, stock market club, gymnastics, and a sportsman’s club just to name a few. Yet, they seem to lack a few sports that we have today, most notably the lacrosse and swim team. At the very end of our yearbooks, we usually have a section about what happened since school started on a global scale, talking about major popular events. Instead of that, this early yearbook features a section of advertisements for businesses in town, such as E and J Clothes and Shoes at the Whippany Shopping Center on Route 10.

One picture of what is now the commons hallway shows that there were no tables there at the time, just an empty hallway with windows. Another picture of the literary staff shows them sitting on the rock outside of the front of the school along with one of the trees outside as a small sapling. At this point whiteboards weren’t even invented, so every photo of a classroom has a chalkboard instead.

After 50 years of pencils, pens, and papers it’s nice to look back at what came before us to see how far we’ve really come.