Members of the Rowland Hall Class of '47 say the only disadvantage to attending an all-girls school that they can recall was having to perform both the male and female roles in school plays.
Especially if there was a kissing scene involved."We had all those nasty boyfriends who came over from East High to giggle at us," Geraldine "Jerry" Ossman Farber said of one such performance with classmate Eve Dahken Krayenbuhl.
Krayenbuhl remembered that the audience's reaction to their romantic scene was contagious. "After Jerry kissed me, I stepped off stage and I got the giggles," she said.
Farber, who lives near San Francisco, and Krayenbuhl, a resident of Switzerland since 1959, were joined Saturday by two members of the graduating class who stayed in Utah - Nancy Tisdel Miles and Nancy Streator Reuling-Hardy.
The eleven women who graduated fifty years ago from Rowland Hall were to receive special recognition at the Rowland Hall-St. Mark's All-Class renunion celebration Saturday night.
Rowland Hall, founded in 1880 as a finishing school for girls, merged with St. Mark's School for Boys in 1964. Today more than 900 male and female students attend classes together at the private school's two campuses.
The members of the graduating Class of '47 who returned to the stately Avenues school Saturday had happy memories of their experiences back in the days when only female students were welcome.
"I thoroughly agree with single-sex schools," Farber said. "I think it gives women a chance to speak up and be themselves without feeling like they have to be impressing anyone or be intimidated by anyone."
Miles attended a co-educational school in Boston before her family moved to Utah. She joked that an all-girls school did make it "hard for me to scrounge up a date for a dance. Coming from Massachusetts, I didn't know anyone here."
Small classes - often only three students were enrolled in a course - also gave the Class of '47 an advantage, Farber said. "You've got to speak up. You can't hide. You're required to express your opinions."
Reuling-Hardy described her school years as "a fabulous experience. My Rowland Hall experience far exceeded my college experience." Much of the credit, she said, belonged to Fanny Jones, headmistress from 1940-1948.
Jones took students on field trips to study architecture and art history. "She gave us a real interest for the rest of our lives," Reuling-Hardy said. "I did Europe on what Mrs. Jones taught me."
There was more to be learned than art history or Latin. Walking over the same wooden floors that they had a half-century ago, the women recalled passing around a racy novel during study hall by disguising it as a history textbook.
And daily attendance in the Episcopal school's chapel was mandatory, no matter what church a student belonged to. Graduation was held at St. Mark's Cathedral nearby.