May 24, 2015 2 min read

Kids today have a great deal of freedom in choosing their school clothes. It wasn’t always that way.

Debbie Lyon Moe, who graduated from Canon-McMillan High School in 1971, remembers when girls were not allowed to wear slacks or jeans. “No mini skirts were allowed,” she wrote in an email. “When you wore skirts, the hem had to touch the floor when kneeling.”

Moe, who is second from left in the current Mystery Photo, now lives in Gettysburg. “I really enjoyed the trip down Memory Lane. We all remember this because we had just won the right to wear pants to school, after staging a sit-in! The pants had to be pantsuits, and the tops had to cover your butt.”

Moe moved to Washington, D.C., in the mid 1970s, where she met her husband. The couple had five sons and moved 13 years ago to Gettysburg. Both are now retired.

“My family is still in Canonsburg, ” Moe said over the phone. “We go back every year.”

Donna Marinelli Oreski was teaching English at the time the photo was taken. A Cokeburg native, she was a graduate of California State College (now California University of Pennsylvania), and after earning a master’s degree from Duquesne University, she became a guidance counselor at C-M. She was elected chairman of California State College’s board of trustees in 1978. She later was a guidance counselor in Ohio, where she died in 1992 at age 48.

Clothing styles had gone wild in the late 1960s, but school administrators fought change as long as they could.

“The guys were all starting to grow their hair long, but the rule was no hair could touch your shirt collar,” Moe said. “A few of the guys literally wore wigs over their long hair during school hours.”

Just a few years after the Canon-McMillan sit-in, students were permitted to wear jeans. They owe thanks to these brave fashion pioneers.