Easter 1956

Easter was a day to dress up. We always dressed up to go to church, but on Easter everyone usually had a new dress. This meant a trip downtown to the department store, where all the big display windows would be full of the new Spring fashions. My mother loved looking at all the new styles. There would be a giant Easter Bunny in the Children's Wear department and little kids could get their picture taken with him. Somewhere I have a picture of me with the Easter bunny - I'll show it to you if I find it. What Mother liked even better than going downtown in Huntington was driving up to my grandmother's in Charleston and going downtown to the big department stores there. she thought the stores there were more stylish. However, that was a long trip and took a whole Saturday so we didn't do that very often.

My Dad always got a little corsage of flowers for Mother and for me. He brought them in all wrapped in crisp cellophane from the florist. Mother carefully set them in the refrigerator to stay fresh until Sunday morning.

Girls always wore dresses to church or Sunday school. Boys always wore a coat and tie. Here's my Sunday School class from 1956:

(My Dad had an 8 millimeter camera, so these pictures weren't videos, they were films.)

You can tell that Spring Valley Presbyterian Church was a pretty small church by the size of my class. The boy in my class is Eddie Miller. There are three girls my age: Kay Stevens , Nikki Skeens, and me. Kay is the one in the navy blue coat, Nikki has the blue dress, and I have a red dress with a matching jacket. The littler girl is Nikki's little sister, I can't remember her name.

Notice that all of the girls are wearing gloves. You just weren't dressed up if you didn't have gloves on. Will you be wearing gloves for Easter?