John F. Kennedy Class of '74

I was born in Richmond, Va. In 1968, John F. Kennedy was built and opened it's doors for the fall semester. At that time, I was a 7th grader at Woodville Elementary. The principle at JFK invited us to attend the school as a means to fill the classrooms. We participated in selecting the school's mascot (Kougars), the colors (scarlet & gold), and the alma mater (taken from Liebestraum). For our 8th grade year, we were invited to continued our stay. In 1970, desegregation took place where the busing laws to effect. The line was drawn in the middle of my neighborhood where one side went to JFK and the other side went to Armstrong High School, thus separating our classmates where.half of our class remained at JFK and graduated in 1974. I played sousaphone (tuba) in the Kennedy's band from the 7th - 12th, then continued at Va. State College from '75 - '77. I'm currently employed at E.I. DuPont de 'Nemours & Co., where I will be retiring in August 2015 with 38 years of service. I'm living my lifelong dream of having my own band (The Dap Mallory Band) in which I play bass guitar. I'm the chairman of the JFK High School Alumni Reunion Committee. In 2004, the school board decided to close down Armstrong (our rivalry) and rename our beloved school...Armstrong High School. As you can imagine, this travesty left the entire JFK alumni devastated. Upon their arrival, they trashed our school by throwing away our artifacts ('71 & '72 district championship football trophies) as well as other historical items. In 2006, the committee put on a multi-class reunion (class of '69 - '79) that was a huge success. My band performed to a capacity crowd of over 500 Kougars family & guest. In 2008, the committee put on another event that commemorated our school's 40th Anniversary with over 300 classmates attending. Currently, the committee has gotten approval from the school board permitting us to put a marker to commemorate the legacy of our great school. This event will consist of a special program in the auditorium, the unveiling ceremony of the marker, and a "Kougarama" tailgate party on the back grounds of the school. We are asking our JFK alumni to donate a minimum of $10.00 to help with expenses for this special event. We have a "John F Kennedy Alumni Association" website on facebook, as well as a page on classmates.com where I am the event planner. Please forgive for this long winded info, but when I came upon your website by accident, I was truly amazed that we have a sister school in Canada, upon many other JFK schools in the USA. I see that your class is about to have a 40th reunion this year. We were planning to so the same, however, this event was even more important to us. Thank you for your time and patience in reading this, and on behalf of all of us JFK Kougars, we wish you much success in your future endeavors. Please feel free to contact me anytime. Have a wonderful day and mat God bless all of your classmates. Take care.