Are there memories that lodge forever in your mind stronger than those of your close friendships in high school?  Perhaps there are a few.

If you were a boy, perhaps making a sports team made you suddenly more popular than you had ever been before in your life.  But if you were a girl in those particular years, you hadn't as many options as the boys.  Making the cheerleading squad was definitely at the top of the ladder.  Wearing your cheerleading outfit to school on game days was just the best, wasn't it?  All eyes in the school followed you down the hall.  Any cheerleader was at the center of the school's social world.

Living in Japan, it was important for us to bring our American customs with us.  If you were an American expatriate dependent, either in Asia or Europe, high school rituals were an established part of life.  The honors bestowed upon our peers gave us that connection to our homeland.  We were following traditions established long before we were born.  Honors of a sports or academic nature that showcased individual and team achievement were highlighted at assemblies before the entire school and written about in the school newspaper.  They were important to us.

But there was one honor that was just beyond every other, wasn't there?  One that resonates throughout your life.  One that was not part of a team or a group, an honor that was bestowed upon only two people .. one boy and one girl .. and your classmates remember it three and four decades later .. but perhaps not in the intricate detail that you do.

Was there anything quite like being elected by your classmates .. whether it was in Tokyo or Paris or Frankfurt or London or anywhere that we were strangers in a strange land .. as King and Queen of the Senior Prom?
 

	Bill Murray and Peggy Hopkins King and Queen of the 1960 Senior Prom Narimasu High School, Tokyo, Japan

Bill and Peggy make their grand  entrance into the Senior Prom	Peggy Hopkins, Queen of the Senior  Prom preparing for the Big Night

The Queen surveys her  Grant Heights domain	Peggy and Bill in  her parents' quarters	Peggy and Bill Roy (?)

"No, don't take my picture!"	Frank Wilson and Ray Hutchinson, two of Peggy's pals

Pete Omlansky, another of Peggy's friends, in gridiron attire, was a Narimasu Dragon letterman	Barry Pope (left, in Dee Smith's swim suit), at Camp Drake pool, allowed Peggy to take this picture, and probably thought it would never see the light of day

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