Pictured above are 16 of the 24 National Merit Student finalists from Cheltenham High School’s Class of 1974.
According to local historian Chuck Langerman, the class had 43 letter of commendation recipients and a total of 67 students who received national recognition, ranking “tops in the nation among all high schools in the class of 1974” according to the National Association of Meritorious Student Scholarships.
The Class of 1974 Facebook group can be found here.
Dr. Brenda Silver
Dr. Silver, who graduated in 1960, grew up on Woodlawn Avenue in the Melrose Park section of Cheltenham Township, Langerman said.
She majored in English at the University of Pennsylvania and is now the Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
At Dartmouth, Professor Silver was instrumental in founding the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. She arrived at Dartmouth in 1972, the year the college enrolled its first women as four-year students.
She created the English department’s course “Women and Literature: Feminist Perspectives” and was one of the founders of the women’s studies program, and has also taught courses on twentieth-century British fiction, postmodern fiction, popular fiction, cyberculture, and the author Virginia Woolf.
Dr. Silver has published extensively on Virginia Woolf and contemporary literary and cultural narrative.
Dr. Silver, Marissa Navarro, and an unidentified faculty member (Courtesy of Dartmouth Libraries)
Dr. Paul Spiewak
Spiewak, a 1997 graduate of the university and current head baseball coach at Methacton High School in Collegeville, achieved his 300th career win last month and has since coached the Warriors to a Pioneer Athletic Conference title.
He also serves as vice principal at the high school.
While at Cheltenham High School, he was named to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s All-Southeastern Pennsylvania Baseball First Team in 1996 and 1997. Spiewak pitched 15-2 during his junior and senior seasons, and was 7-1 with a 1.20 ERA in 1997, according to Langerman.
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