Marine Corps Base Quantico -- The Marine Corps Base Quantico archives possess droves of documentation on how Marines lived, drilled, and studied on base since 1917, but they don’t know much about family life aboard Quantico throughout the years.

“What was it like to be a military brat here?” Jim Ginther, archives team leader, asked a group of Quantico High School graduates, who were gathered on base for an all-years reunion from Oct. 29 to Nov. 1. He was escorting them on a tour of the Alfred M. Gray Research Center at Marine Corps University.

“It was awesome!” came the answer.

Ginther told the group that the archives and special collections branch would welcome donations of papers, photographs, or film from their time aboard Quantico.

“We love working with donors,” he said. “You are not bothering us!”

Christina Skoczylas Cicero was born and spent her first six months on base in 1946, then returned for her final three years of high school. She graduated in 1964. She lives in northern California now, but she and several other graduates from the 1960s return to Quantico High School every year.

“Coming here is a labor of love that I wouldn’t trade,” she said.

Cicero said that much has changed on base. The house she lived in and many others located near Harry Lee Hall were torn down. But while much of the physical landscape has changed, the close-knit community feeling she remembers hasn’t dissipated.

“We knew our house was going to be razed, so my brother and I went back to visit it and we were taking pictures in front of it,” Cicero remembers. “The occupants at the time saw us and asked us in and let us look at our old bedrooms. And that’s always what we used to do for people when we lived there.”

Military kids experience transient childhoods, but when they are on a base like Quantico, they can take comfort from the fact that everyone surrounding them lives the same kind of lifestyle. There’s a shared understanding of change and attachments to places and people that last over great distance.

“When we get together, it’s not just a high school reunion, it’s a way-of-life reunion,” Cicero said. “The colors, the lighting, the smells, the feeling in the air — all of it makes us feel like kids and act like kids!”

“Quantico is very much a part of my past,” said Barbara Dickinson Taylor, another 1964 graduate of QHS. “Reunions here are special because when people graduate from here, they go all over the world.”

Taylor and her husband, who live in Stewart, Fla., support scholarships for QHS students along with other 1960s graduates.

“When we meet with current students, we always have really good conversations, because we’ve walked in their footsteps,” she said.

Jeannette Hall, who taught at QHS from 1966 to 2007, was also on Friday’s tour of the archives. She said that she bought the year book every year she taught and continues to buy them even after her retirement. She asked Ginther if the archives would be interested in them.

“Absolutely,” Ginther replied. “We’re always looking for documents that tell us something we don’t already know.”

Many students at QHS went on to become Marines and to hold leadership positions in the Marine Corps. Gen. Charles Krulak, the 31st commandant of the Marine Corps, attended the high school and was coached in football by Barry Hall, who was on Friday’s tour.

Hall, who taught at QHS for 14 years, said that Krulak, aged 16, badgered him to allow him to coach JV football.

“Even then, he was showing his drive to lead,” Hall said.

Stories like this, collected by the families and friends of Marines in their memories or in their attics, can often be crucial to completing the picture of the Marines’ role in history.

For example, Ginther told of a donation the archives received from the granddaughter of a Marine.

“She wasn’t sure the collection would be of interest to us,” Ginther said.

But it turned out to contain the Marine’s diary, which included an entry he made on April 15, 1865 — the day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The Marine had been on post at the Navy Yard, which the president visited before continuing on to Ford’s Theater.

“The diary entry described what Lincoln looked like and what he said during that visit, and then how the Marines felt when they heard what happened later,” Ginther said.

Ginther told the group that the archives staff always welcomes questions about potential donations and that the archives are available for civilians to conduct research in.

“If you can get on base, you can get to us,” he said.

— Writer: auphausconner@quanticosentryonline.com