Page 6 - 1967 VESTIGE

Introducing
illiam Pendleton-Randolph Bishop, III - first in his class. First Win the fiftieth class to be graduated from Virginia Episcopal School. With a touch of modesty and a completely straight face, he has told almost every girl, and a few superior prep-types, that he is first in his class. Actually, he is. Alphabetically his name has always been first on the class roster ... When he graduates, however, he will be ranked thirtieth
among his forty-six classmates.
William Bishop, III, (his parents call him Bill, but at V E S - he's
Billy), was born for the Fiftieth Graduating Class; fifty years have brought him into the "goodly heritage." In 1922 his father wore knickers and played varsity football for the school. He, too, graduated without being first in his class, but he always thought his son would be.
Billy might have been, except for Latin that he never could get straight in the tenth grade and had to repeat in summer school. That turned him off on all languages, so he harely scraped through French in his junior year, which was the year he also had trouble with geometry, and that took away study time from history, not to mention English ... Anyway, Billy Bishop enjoys the good life, and if he's typical-he's typical.
In September he cut short his final fling at surfing, and his father
brought him for early football practice and helped him unload all his
gear and get his room in perfect order for his senior year. Billy would
have made first-string, too, except for a leg injury on the fifth day. It f just wouldn't seem to heal. There were three different girls he poured it
all out to on paper. He missed them, each one. He told them about the
injury, about how he had disappointed the coach, and about how long the
days were without them, each one, and about the kind of dorm he intended
to run, and about how he couldn't wait to see his old friends, and he won-
dered about the new boys and the new masters, what they'd be like, and
what it would be like for him- being a senior counselor and all that-
with a dorm to run. He had been elected to counselorship on the next-to-
last ballot in the student election in May, hut Billy didn't know he had come
in on the next-to-last ballot.
He knew only that he looked forward to his senior year, his greatest year: Billy Bishop, first in the Fiftieth Graduating Class-he looked for· ward to that . . .
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Billy Bishop Drawings: Daniel Booten Room Interiors: John Disque Agricola
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