Newspaper Clipping: 50 years later, Byrnes graduates ready to dance? · Greer Heritage Museum collection

Title

Newspaper Clipping: 50 years later, Byrnes graduates ready to dance?

Accession Number

2026.31.4.8

Accession Date

11 August 2026

Accession Creator

Sophie Pendergraft

Depositor

Kala Kenemore

Description

Newspaper clipping featuring article titled, "50 years later, Byrnes graduates ready to dance?"

Contributor

Written by Alexander Morrison for the Upstate Journal

Storage Location

Box 77, Folder 1

Text

50 years later, Byrnes graduates ready to dance?

Alexander Morrison
Upstate Journal

Members of the Byrnes High School Class of 1956, left to right, Lynda Felmet, Jane Cook, and Gayle Clement, talk about their upcoming 50th reunion.

If there is no dancing today at the James F. Byrnes High School 50th class reunion, it will be one of life’s subtle ironies.

Jane Cook spent most of 1955 and 1956 pleading with school administrators to hold a dance, but the reply was always the same: “You cannot dance in this community.”

“We begged to have sock hops in the new gym,” said Cook, part of the Byrnes 1956 senior class, which was the first to graduate from the then new Byrnes High School.

Even then, however, the Byrnes kids were clever. They got around the dancing ban by holding “folk games” (square dancing) in the Lyman Community Building.

The 32 alumni expected to gather at today’s reunion would not have to resort to such chicanery if they want to shake their booties.

Cook said there would be ‘50s music playing and that people could dance if they wanted to.

But dancing prospects didn’t look good Friday afternoon.

“Jane, you know we’re not able to dance,” said her former classmate, Lynda Felmet.

Priorities and, perhaps, abilities change with age.

Whatever their shagging skills, however, the class of 1956 is good at reminiscing– about 15 cent lunches, student driven school buses, greased pig and greasy pole contests, water gun fights on a class trip to Washington D.C. and about the time a group of girls was so bold as to wear Bermuda short and knee-high socks to a football game. (“We turned heads,” Cook said).

They even remember the Byrnes football team lost games.

“It was rought– Greer beat us, Woodruff beat us– it was rough,” said William “Tex” Bentley, father of current Byrnes coach Bobby Bentley.

But past setbacks only sweeten eventual success.

“Once a Rebel always a Rebel,” is seemingly the universal cry of the class of ‘56.

And no matter the memories, they were recalled fondly.

“It was the most wonderful thing in my life,” said then student body president Bill Jones.