Hemlock High School joins War Time Scrap Drive in 1942

Sixth Graders from Hemlock High School join the War Time Scrap Drive. From left: Lewis Gascon, Billy Proctor and Albert Proctor.

Photo courtesy of Democrat and Chronicle.

Hemlock - Collection of waste materials in the current salvage drive is absorbing the attention of Hemlock High School pupils who have canvassed the Hemlock community for scrap accumulations needed in the defense industrial effort.

The pupils, representing an enrollment of 120 in the high school, have collected more than a ton of waste articles useful in the armament program. A portion of a class room of the high school is serving as storage repository. in addition to bales of newspapers and magazines, and cement sacks, about 300 pounds of cardboard have been turned in, 100 pounds of rubber, 75 pounds of scrap iron, tires, 50 shaving tubes, 5 pounds of razor blades, 12 pounds of tinfoil, and 230 pounds of old license plates. They represent chiefly the effort of the grade children in the intensive search for trash accumulations in Hemlock and surrounding rural area.

Mrs. Mae Short, member of the faculty of the high school, has supervised the work and actual trucking into Rochester will be done by Mrs. Short and James Hawthorne, agriculture teacher. Trucks are being loaned by Hugh Drain, an assistant Hemlock fire chief, and C. E. Wemett, Hemlock business man.

Weighing of the steadily mounting piles of waste materials has been done by John Reed of the seventh grade. Carting has been accomplished by Albert Gascon, Lewis Gascon, Billy Proctor of the sixth grade who have been assisted with tying of the bundles by Neil Hoppough and Donald Marshall.

Proceeds from the sale of the junk materials are to be used in another form of patriotic activity sponsored by the schools. Funds will go towards defraying cost of supplies to make hospital bags, hot water bottle covers, ice pack covers and other hospital necessities as well as card table covers and checkerboards for use in USO camps as a project of the Junior Red Cross of Hemlock under chairmanship of Mrs. Short. Collection of postage stamps destined for Queen Mary’s Hospital for Crippled Children in England also is in progress.

Scrap books of animal and baby pictures and Christmas cards are being prepared by smaller children in the primary and intermediate grades. An afghan is being knitted by children in sixth, seventh and eighth grades with yarn donated by the community.