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What started here will end here
How 23-year-staffer Darlene Pfaff’s future began at Huntley
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maggie mcgee I print editor don’t think you get away with
s a 17-year-old, Darlene Pfaff was against moving to some stupid little farm town. The previous 17 years of her life had been spent in a town where kids did not drive their tractors to school every day. She had grown up in Palatine and attended Fremd High School, that was until junior year when her father and family made the move out to the small, rural town of Huntley, Illinois. Moving from Fremd to Huntley was a completely different world for Pfaff. She now had to adjust to a one hallway school instead of a two-story school. She now ate lunch in the same room where she participated in gym class. She now had only one teacher per subject in school. And most foreign to her, everybody knew everybody around town. The culture around town was a huge shock as well. Many students were excused without question if they were late for school. Phrases such as, “The cows got loose this morning” or “I had to finish up my morning chores on the farm” were common back when she was in high school. According to Pfaff, “bibs,” also known as overalls, were worn regularly too. “All of it was excused because [Huntley] was a farm town,” Pfaff said. “At Fremd or at any other high school, I 10 @huntleyvoice
that.” Huntley High School in 1973 was nothing like Huntley High School in 2017. Although the differences in the town and school were plentiful, she quickly adjusted
to her new life in a town out west. Huntley students were always very friendly as Pfaff recalls. However, she was not always a Pfaff. In spring of her junior year, Huntley High School
was hosting its annual Sadie Hawkins dance, where it was tradition that the girls ask the boys out. One of her friends asked if she was planning on going, which explained that she would go if she had someone to ask. Pfaff recalls
Darlene and Dennis Pfaff at Prom in ‘73. (Photo credit: 1973 HHS Yearbook.)