Feb 1, 2015 3 min read

Ground was broken for an addition to Washington High School in 1963, and on Feb. 9, 1965, the cafeteria served its first lunches.

”I believe this (photo) may have been taken in celebration of that opening,” wrote Joyce Neff Hough, who would graduate that June.

”It was a big deal since before that time, students who lived less than a certain distance (I believe one mile) had to walk home for lunch.”

Although Joyce in her senior year had not much time left to spend in the cafeteria, she made up for it later. She went to work for Washington School District’s food-service management company in 1976 and was food services director from 1982 to 1999. She now lives in Annapolis, Md.

Wash High graduates have a bustling social network, and it wasn’t long before we started hearing from members of the class of 1967, among them Jean Eros May, who’s on the left in this quartet of sophomore girls.

”I don’t recall why there would not have been many boys in the cafeteria; perhaps it had to do with scheduling,” wrote May from her home in Houston, Texas.

By telephone, May said, “All four of us were from the Tylerdale section of town, and we all went to Clark School. We were together from the first grade.”

May’s father, Ernest “Red” Eros, was a teacher and coach at Wash High when this week’s Mystery Photo was taken. He was installed in the Washington County Sports Hall of Fame shortly before his death in 2005.

May graduated from Bryn Mawr College and earned a master’s degree in English literature from Rice University in Houston, Texas, where she and her husband, Henry, have been ever since. They have two grown sons.

Mary Jo Ermacoff Shingler, second from left, went on to graduate from West Virginia University and taught social studies in Arizona before going to work for Mellon Bank. She later moved with her husband and two children to Augusta, Ga., where she died of cancer in 2001 at age 52.

Margaret McCarrell, right, is living in Washington. McCarrell said she has lived and worked in Washington County and Washington, D.C., and has raised a daughter. We were unable to contact Carol Kongelka for this article, although classmates believe she is still living in the Washington area.

We were able to verify the identification by way of a date provided by Joyce Hough. The photo appeared in the Feb. 10, 1965, edition of The Reporter and was found on microfilm.

Some of our readers called or wrote with the correct location but the wrong date, providing names of students who graduated much later. At least three other readers guessed that picture was of the cafeteria at Trinity High School, and another caller thought it might be Beth-Center.

Observer-Reporter.