Blast from the Past 1/23/2015
Published 12:00 am Friday, January 23, 2015
1940 BHS Band
The photo at right as published in the 1940 Batesville High School annual contained more faces than names. Using the names that were supplied, and with help from Bob Dunlap and Margaret O’Keefe, we have been able to determine the identities of all but two of its members.
Martha Blanche Monroe and Jeanette Cassell are the drum majorettes (left and right respectively, on the front row.) Musicians on that front row are identified as (from left) Bobby Dunlap, J. R. Lewis, Percy Graves, Robert Graves, Sidney Curry, Boyce Keating, Lamar Hentz, Sonny Duke — and the two we have not been able to identify. At right stands band master R. E. McDonald.
The three girls in the middle center are Margaret Vance (O’Keefe), Kathleen McDonald and Ann Powell.
The back row includes (from left) Vernon Farrow, Daniel Boone, Bob Haltom, Fred Graves, David Broome and Aubrey Moore.
1940 BHS Baseball Team
The names and faces matched in this baseball team photo, also from the 1940 BHS annual. Manager Charles Stewart sits at center, front. Players include (from left, front) George Kuykendall, Eugene Radford, A. B. Monroe, Marvin Taylor, Armistead Flint, Emile Profilet, Spencer Towles, L. B. Jones (back, from left) Donald Wilson, Hal Ferrell, Tootsie Moss, Smylie Carothers, Harvey Seale, Delain Hardy, Lee Logan Byers, Billy Seale and Coach Sam Hamilton.
Most, if not all, would leave for military service during World War II within a year or two of this photo. One, A. B. Monroe, would not return.
Monroe’s life was the subject of a 2014 Pan Gens program presented by historian Kay Hentz. Monroe’s bomber was shot down over Germany. He was captured by civilians and by German police who quickly executed him. After the war, Allied authorities tracked down his executioners and charged them as war criminals. Other members of Monroe’s bomber crew who were captured by German military officials were sent to POW camps and survived the war.