Do you remember your Senior Prom? It’s one of the special moments in a teenager’s life and a kind of rite of passage. Recently, in doing some research on the Erie RR in my town, I discovered the special 1959 Junior-Senior Prom at one of the two high schools here at the time. In 1959 the Erie still had a presence in Kent: a working yard, a fine depot, passenger trains, and a longstanding special relationship with a town whose Erie Shops at one point employed more than half of the town’s workforce. In other words: a railroad town.
By 1959 it was common for high school kids to drive to a fancy restaurant somewhere before or after the prom. The dangers of highway driving at night caused the prom committee to offer an alternative: a specially chartered Erie train to take the attendees from Kent to Youngstown and back, with a stop in Youngstown at a fancy hotel for something to eat.
The Erie’s employee magazine covered the event and I’d like to share it here with you during this Prom season 2025. This one sounds to me like it was a lot of fun.
By the way, have you seen what kids, especially the boys, wear to Proms these days? Spoiler alert: It’s not a white sport coat.
I’m indebted to the Railfan.netERIE/DL&W/EL Railroad Magazine Archive for illustrations.
And you’re probably doing just fine and not missing out on much at all.
Here’s another home-schooled railfan and model railroader who’s making a name for himself in the YouTube and railfan press world. If you haven’t seen his work you should, and here it is.
I didn’t go to my prom but it would have been possible for me to get there by train in 1988. Ours was held at the Stouffer’s Hotel (yes, THAT Stouffer’s) adjacent to the Terminal Tower. Theoretically I could have taken the Rapid Transit into the old C.U.T. and walked over to Stouffer’s. However in those days C.U.T. was a dark place with all of the interesting station areas like the waiting room blocked off.
I enjoyed your comment, Becky, especially the thought of taking either the Shaker or CTS Rapids to your prom at the hotel. The image of a high school couple, in complete formal dress with corsage, riding the Rapid at 7:30 PM and then again at midnight, certainly made me smile. What could go wrong?
Very interesting, taking train like that! The grounds of the high school I and my siblings went to was split by a rail line, the school was on one side and the football and baseball fields on the other. BTW my brother did wear a white sport coat to his prom in 1958.
Thanks, Ed. Seriously, is there anyone that doesn’t like Norman Rockwell? He may not have been a great artist like JMW Turner or Monet, but he was one heck of an illustrator.
wjstix: I went to three Senior Proms (and not because of bad grades!) (1965, '66, and '67) and wore a white dinner jacket to all of them. I regret that now: we kinda resembled penguins.
But I want to thank you for your suggestion a few months ago when I was looking for a good poem about trains. You suggested “Travel” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. In the event, I decided to use it in my new book about the railroads in my town. I paired it with a fine watercolor by Ted Rose (“The Shenandoah”) and the effect is stunning. My book comes out next week and I know I’ll get compliments on using the Millay poem–this is a college town with lots of English teachers and the like. So thank you again.
Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Travel” is an absolute classic, but have any of you heard of Joyce Kilmer’s “The Twelve-Forty-Five?”
And if you’re an “exile” from northern New Jersey like me you’ll recognize (and enjoy) the place names.
Brilliant!
I’d forgotten, if indeed I ever knew it, that Joyce Kilmer was an American poet. This is a fine poem, Flintlock, and as New Jersey as Bergen Hill. Then I read these lines:
“Perhaps a woman writhes in pain
And listens—listens for the train!
The train, with healing on its wings.”
There’s a similar feeling for me when I’m in bed, the weather is storming and the wind is roaring through the trees and I think I hear something: like an even mightier wind, growing louder. And then!
A CSX whistle!
It’s not a tornado after all! It’s a train, “with healing on its wings.”
