Leon High School
Tallahassee, Florida
Class of 1959
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May 1956 Headlines
(courtesy of http://dmarie.com/timecap/)
May 4 - US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Enwetak
May 5 - Jim Bailey (US) runs the mile record 3:58.6 in Los Angeles CA
May 5 - World championships of judo are 1st held, in Tokyo
May 10 - French Government sends 50,000 reservists to Algeria
May 16 - Egypt recognizes People's Republic of China
May 16 - Great Britain performs nuclear Test at Monte Bello Is Australia
May 18 - Mantle hits homerun from both sides of plate for record 3rd time
May 20 - Thermonuclear bomb dropped from plane-Bikini Atoll
May 21 - US explodes 1st airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll
May 22 - "Bob Hope Show" last airs on NBC-TV
May 23 - Presbyterian Church begins accepting women ministers
May 23 - World Trade Center dedicated in Ferry Building, San Francisco
May 28 - Eisenhower signs farm bill allows government to store agricultural surplus
May 30 - Bus boycott begins in Tallahassee FL
May 30 - Mickey Mantle misses by 18" hitting 1st homerun out of Yankee Stadium
COUNTDOWN TO GRADUATION - MAY 1956
Well, that's it for this month. See you again next month, when we complete our Freshman year at Leon!
As usual, PLEASE - if you have any walks down memory lane that you'd like to share, particularly in the June 1956 time frame, by all means email them to me! I really enjoy having something in here written by someone other than me!
OOPS! WAIT! Almost forgot ... as I mentioned last month, I'm keeping track of what our "elders" are doing for their 50th reunions (Class of '56, '57, '58). Check out the Class of '56 50th Reunion photos by clicking either of the photos on the left. Who knows? You may actually see someone you knew back then.
Personal Memories of May 1956
Well, May 4th just passed and I hit 65. I don't feel much different. In 1956, however, turning 15 was a biggie. I was then able to drive alone in the daytime (Am I right about this? I didn't hear back from anyone after my statement about Learner Permits, etc. last month). Anyway, I'm pretty sure this is the month I started driving my Studebaker alone ... and the month I really started living on the edge of being in deep trouble most of the time. Thinking back on some of the things we did in those years really makes me wonder how I stayed out of jail and out of the hospital. Some of us didn't -- I've often thought of our classmate that got in big trouble when he was 15 and got sent to prison for life. I've always thought about how terrible it must have been to spend your whole life in prison and not experience all of those things that we've all gone through. I had always thought of it as him being a little wild, but no more than others our age, then getting in with some older guys, getting hold of some moonshine, and doing some things he wouldn't have considered in normal circumstances. Then, I did a search and got a couple of surprises. It didn't happen when he was 15, it was when he was 18 in May 1959. That explains how he made it into the annual as a 1959 graduate. And I looked him up in the Department of Corrections database and learned he was paroled in 1990 ... so, it didn't really go like I'd always thought. Not sure how I got off on this tangent ... guess it has to do with turning 15.
I left last month's Studebakers and Elvis up on top of the page again this month for several reasons. One was, turning 15 really made that Studebaker the highlight of my life, being my major means of making money, getting where I needed to go, and also my major expense. It was never clear if we had our cars in those days so we could work, or if we worked so we could have a car. A little of both, I suppose.
I left Elvis up there, because I noticed that he was on the top ten for UK this month. I just happened to look ahead at the headlines for May 1959 and there it said "Mon May 11 - Elvis Presley's 1st entry on UK charts with Heartbreak Hotel " - isn't that strange? Either the headline site is wrong or the UK Top Ten site is wrong .. whatever .. I'd tend to believe that Heartbreak Hotel made the charts this month in 1956.
Another reason they're still up there is that I didn't have any major ideas for this month. Guess I could put a birthday cake with 65 (or 15?) candles on it, but that's just my birthday, not everybody's, so that's kind of dumb also.
Top UK 10 Hits of May 1956
(First week of the month)
(courtesy of
(US Hits List Not Available This Month)
UK Top Ten (first week of the month):
1 Ronnie Hilton - No Other Love
2 Winifred Atwell - Poor People Of Paris
3 Teresa Brewer - A Tear Fell
4 Lonnie Donegan - Lost John / Stewball
5 David Whitfield - My September Love
6 Pat Boone - I'll Be Home
7 Kay Starr - Rock And Roll Waltz
8 Dream Weavers - It's Almost Tomorrow
9 Hilltoppers - Only You
10 Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel
The biggie news headline that caught my eye was "May 30 - Bus boycott begins in Tallahassee FL" - Wow! Tallahassee made the headline page. I vaguely recall the bus boycott and a sit-in at Montgomery Wards (I think that was in Tallahassee), but certainly wasn't aware of the history being made in our little town. Other than that, I guess the big news involved US and UK doing nuclear tests and the Presbyterian church allowing women ministers. Not much I can say about either of those.
I thought I'd bring the jukebox back this month, even though I don't have the USA Top Ten list above. As sometimes happens, I could only get the UK list. I'm not sure why the USA list is so hard to get some months, but that's the way it is.
While doing a search on "May 1956", I found a list labelled Best Hits of the Decade. Since that's about the only mildly interesting thing I found, I went and looked through to see what May 1956 had there. The list for the whole year of 1956 is really great! I remember every one of those songs ... probably because they were playing on my car radio 15 or so hours every day. I guess I spent as much time in my car in those days as I do on the computer today. So, here's the list for 1956:
February 1956 - #6 Why Do Fools Fall in Love Frankie Lymon and the TeenagersFebruary 1956 - #7 Mack the Knife Louis ArmstrongFebruary 1956 - #17 Speedo The CadillacsMarch 1956 - #2 Blue Suede Shoes Carl PerkinsMarch 1956 - #4 (You've Got) The Magic Touch The PlattersMay 1956 - #3 I'm In Love Again Fats DominoJune 1956 - #7 Be Bop A Lula Gene VincentJune 1956 - #18 Rollover Beethoven Chuck BerryJuly 1956 - #1 My Prayer The PlattersJuly 1956 - #15 Stranded In The Jungle The CadetsAugust 1956 - #1 Hound Dog Elvis PresleyAugust 1956 - #2 Honky Tonk Bill DoggettSeptember 1956 - #24 In The Still Of The Night Five SatinsOctober 1956 - #1 Love Me Tender Elvis PresleyOctober 1956 - #2 Blueberry Hill Fats DominoDecember 1956 - #12 Since I Met You Baby Ivory Joe HunterDecember 1956 - #17 Jim Dandy Lavern BakerSorry for the list not being straight .. too much trouble to fix right now. Is this not a very familiar list of songs we all heard on that old Leon jukebox? I certainly think so!
Didn't really find anything else interesting in my search this month. A couple of links about the Tallahassee Bus Boycott and the Nuclear Testing in Bimini, but little else. It seems that a young man named Gary Powers started in the second class for CIA U-2 pilots in May 1956.
Aha! Just found a biggie! The Car and Driver magazine did a roadtest on the brand new 1956 Corvette in May 1956. The article says "In my opinion, the Corvette as it stands is fully as much a dual-purpose machine as the stock Jaguar, Triumph, or Austin-Healey. Without qualification, General Motors is now building a sports car. There is little question, though, that it is to be competitive with the Thunderbird." The photo is from UsedCorvettesForSale.com - seems the base price in 1956 was $3120. Now, you can buy them in the $55,000 to $75,000 range! That's amazing! Click the photo on the right to enlarge it.
