It was Wednesday, September 5, 1973. "Brother Louie" by Stories was the number one song on the Billboard charts, and other popular hits included Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On," Grand Funk Railroad's "We're An American Band," and Clint Holmes' "Playground in My Mind"; the Watergate hearings were well underway; and the New York Mets began their miraculous September surge to a place in the World Series.

And, the James E. Allen Learning Centers in Dix Hills and Melville opened.

At JEA Dix Hills, the building exteriors were complete, but not all the classrooms were ready for the September 5 opening: carpeting had not been laid down, and the gymnasium/auditorium and several classrooms in the 400s and 600s clusters were still under construction. Therefore, the JEA school day was done in half-day shifts throughout September, with the 300s Intermediate and Secondary (High School) Clusters being in session from 8:20 AM to 11:30 AM and the Primary and 600s Intermediate Clusters coming in from 12 Noon to 3:00 PM. All 600s Intermediate and some Secondary classes had to share classrooms with 300s Intermediate and Primary homerooms.

Here's a list of other key dates from JEA-Year One:

 

• Oct. 1, 1973: First full day of classes at JEA-Dix Hills.
• Circa Dec. 14, 1973: At JEA-Dix Hills' first Christmas concert, a chorus of Intermediate level students performed such songs as "Delta Dawn," and "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown;" some Intermediate girls, specifically Mrs. Callan’s class plus Aleta Schmid from Mrs. Parrot’s class, gave a baton twirling demonstration; and JEA's Cardinal Band gave its first public performance. Its original signature tune was an instrumental version of the Temptations' hit "Masterpiece."
• Circa Feb. 6, 1974: JEA-Dix Hills' first Picture Day.
• March/April 1974: Photos were taken of all JEA students and classes for the 1974 Cardinal Yearbook.
• JEA formed its first Boy Scout Troop, Troop 587, midway through the school year. In March, JEA-Dix Hills began forming Cub Scout Pack 587 via an assembly at which a short animated film about the Cub Scouts was shown.
• April 25, 1974: Cub Scout Pack 587 den meetings began. They took place Thursdays from 2:00 to 3:00 PM.
• May 1974: JEA-Dix Hills' first Science/Art Fair and Spring Concert took place.
• June 7, 1974: JEA Dix Hills Physical Education, Music and Art awards assemblies.
• Circa June 9, 1974:First annual JEA family picnic.
• June 14, 1974:
• JEA-Dix Hills' first senior class graduated in a late-morning ceremony.  The four graduating seniors that year were Anna Giarusso, Todd McMillan, Maria Melendez, and Marc Saudino.
• First full-pack gathering of Pack 587 took place that evening in the gym.
• June 17-20: Field Days
• June 21, 1974: Last Day of School
• Late June/Early July 1974: Cardinal '74 Yearbooks were mailed out to
  students and their families.

 

 

Intermediate Cluster Name Changes: The 300s Cluster was originally called simply the Intermediate Cluster, and the 600s Cluster the Older Intermediate, presumably for junior high school-aged students. (Not only did the 600s Cluster originally have lockers that weren't in the 300s Cluster, but also as you entered the cluster from the Secondary (400s) Cluster you were greeted by a wall with a large 7-8-9 logo in mounted Futura typeface signs.)

However, the 300s Cluster became the Intermediate Open Cluster because each classroom in that area was a full-sized hexagon housing a class of twenty students ages 9 to 12 taught by a team of two teachers in an "open" classroom setting. The 600s Cluster became the Intermediate Contained Cluster because most classrooms there were divided into half-hexagons with the addition of removable walls, and the classes consisted of an average of ten students ages 9 to 12 supervised by one teacher in a more traditional self-contained classroom setting.

 

The Un-Bell-like Bell: During the first half of the 1973/74 school year, JEA-Dix Hills used a traditional ding-a-ling bell to alert Secondary Cluster students that it was time to go to their next classes. By January, that ding-a-ling bell was replaced by a new electronic tone set in the b above middle c, and that tone played for about four seconds. JEA-Dix Hills was one of the first schools to have that electronic tone bell, and several other schools followed suit by the end of the 1970s, including two schools I went to after JEA: Lindenhurst Junior High School and St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School.

 

Your Class Is Missing From the Yearbook! The Intermediate Open homeroom of Mrs. Fisher and Miss Melyn was virtually absent from the Cardinal '74 Yearbook. Why didn't this class get its own pages in that yearbook the way most other JEA-Dix Hills classes at all levels did?

 

Here's another item of interest about the Cardinal '74 yearbook: This yearbook departed from usual school yearbook tradition in that Primary and Intermediate classes, as well as Secondary homerooms, got their own picture pages or half pages. Future JEA yearbooks would be for Secondary classes only.

Click here for a list of early members of the JEA—Dix Hills staff.

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This page is copyright 1999 David R. Jackson.

This page was last updated June 23, 2003.