The Trumpet was founded in the 1930s and has covered thousands, if not tens of thousands of topics over the ensuing decades. Unfortunately, our website’s digitized versions of print edition only go back to the 2021-22 school year, so decades of papers have been irretrievably lost. Or have they?
There is a scrapbook containing an assortment of articles from The Trumpet and The Morning Call from the 1950s. Topics covered range from Parkland’s first football game to an accidental stabbing to figure skating. Given that several decades have passed since the publication of these articles, the subjects of these articles are either octogenarians or are sadly deceased. Let’s take a deep dive into our paper’s past and into the lives of the students who our paper covered.
While it may be hard for some to believe that there was a time when Parkland halfbacks not named Trey Tremba (12) scored touchdowns, I assure you that that is the case. In Parkland High School’s first-ever game against Slatington High School (now renamed to Northern Lehigh High School), Parkland squeaked out a 7-0 victory. The lone score came on a 60-yard touchdown by halfback Steve Mazepa Jr. Mazepa later became a chiropractor in Emmaus, along with being an author and a collector of artifacts and antiques. He passed away in 2021.
The Lehigh Valley once had a junior police force, which was founded by Gene Arndt. However, Arndt did not end up becoming a cop. Instead, he worked as a truck driver for Benedix Transportation before passing away in 1989.
Nick Coval (12) is Parkland’s current basketball star; however, that mantle was once held by Woody Helfrich. Helfrich was a basketball star at Parkland and at Division II Catawba College, where he remains tied as the 6th leading scorer in program history. Helfrich became a teacher at Parkland in 1959 and retired from teaching in 1997. He passed away in 2022.
Parkland High School had three honorable mention recipients in the national
Science Talent Search: Ronald Zeigler, Daniel Roth, and Byron Lichtenwalner. The Trumpet was unable to find any accessible information about Roth except for the fact that he passed away in 1988, but Zeigler and Lichtenwalner both proved to be well worthy of their distinctions. Zeigler worked as an engineer and computer entrepreneur who designed automated systems for the medical and food industry, while Lictenwalner had a thirty-year career at IBM. Both of them are now deceased, with Zeigler passing away in 2014 and Lichtenwalner passing away in 2008.
In 1955, 15-year-old John Danner was seriously injured in an accidental stabbing. The unfortunate incident occurred during horseplay. Fortunately, Danner made a full recovery and later worked as a firefighter and in Dorney Park’s ecology department. He passed away in 2023.
Have you ever wondered who the Class of 1956 senior officers were? They were President Alex Satkowski, Vice President Roy Yeager, Treasurer Louise Wotring, and Secretary Lucy Hersh. Satkowski later served in the Army during the Vietnam War and owned Tall Timber Nurseries. He died in 2015. Wotring worked as a lab technician at Lucent Technologies. She passed away in 2021. Secretary Lucy Hersh is believed to still be alive, and no information has been found regarding the fate of Roy Yeager.
Paul Semmel is the most famous of the individuals discussed in this post, as he is the only one with a Wikipedia article. On January 7th, 1957, Semmel was elected to the position of president of the Lehigh County 4-H Dairy Club. This would not be the last time Semmel held a leadership position, as he served Pennsylvania’s 187th district in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1983-2006 as a member of the Republican Party. He is still alive today at the age of 83 and owns a dairy farm.
Dick James, a star in both baseball and basketball, was the recipient of Parkland’s “Outstanding Senior Athlete” distinction in 1957. He would later play one season of minor league baseball in the Detroit Tigers organization as a pitcher, serve in the US Army, founded James Insurance Co., and was inducted into the Hall of Fames of both the Blue Mountain League and the Lehigh Valley League. He passed away in 2019.
Parkland once had a star figure skater in 14-year-old Phyllis Ann Whitman. Called Parkland’s Queen on Ice, she was coached by legendary figure skating coach Maribel Vinson Owens. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any information about her outside of this article. The only thing I can positively conclude was that she was not selected to be a member of America’s 1961 World Figure Skating team, which was for the best since all of America’s Figure Skating delegation were tragically killed in the devastating crash of Sabena Flight 548, including her coach.
Despite having a plethora of articles from the mid-1950s, the rest of The Trumpet’s history appears to have been lost to time. However, the digitization of our paper that has occurred under advisor Mrs. Destiny Beck, has ensured that today’s article will be preserved for future generations. Who knows,, the articles released online by our current staff could serve as inspiration for the revered 2084-2085 Parkland Trumpet staff, who now have an article idea pre-made for them several decades before they are born. While that may seem far-fetched, the idea that the 2023-2024 staff would be reporting on the subjects of articles that predate the birth of nearly all of Parkland’s current staff members would have been just as absurd to the writers all those years ago.
