From Rheal:
Wow!!! We didn’t know this group even existed!! My wife just discovered this site yesterday and we live only a few miles from Lake Hartwell (in Oconee County, SC where we retired many years ago).
I graduated from FAHS in 1954 and that’s also where I met my wife-to-be (Roberta “Berdie” Socks), but didn’t know it at the time. (She was a freshman and I was a senior.) Back then it was Frankfurt High School and renamed Frankfurt American High School in 1961. My Dad, an Army LTC, worked at the I.G. Farben building (IG Hochhaus).
A bit of history here (which you probably already know about): the old school was shut down after I graduated (no, there’s no connection to me here; actually, it was just moved to a different building!). The old school was located at Am Bornheimer Hang 46 and had been built in 1929-30 and remodeled many times over the years. Originally, it served as a reform school (in the German language, “reform” means “talented”) and later as a German wartime field hospital, an officers’ school and finally a warehouse and homeless shelter.
The war in Europe ended May 8, 1945 (V-E Day), and from May 1945 to September 1946 the building was used as billets for American troops, primarily Engineers and Signal battalions. Then it served as a Department of Defense Dependents’ School from 1946 until the autumn of 1954 when the school was moved to brand new buildings very close to the I.G. Farben building. But you probably already know all that…
Anyway, our family returned to the US in the summer of 1954. My wife-to be’s family returned a couple years later (after a Paris assignment) and she tracked me down! We were married in 1959, have 3 wonderful kids (kids?? They’re in their 50s and 60s. Yikes!!) and we have been very happily married for almost 64 years.
Thanks for bringing back some the great memories.
Rheal
The old school
Roberta “Berdie” Socks sitting on the steps
The school buses we rode (May, 1954)