What is the First Lady of Utah Doing at SJHS?

Did you know that some famous people went to SJHS?  On Friday, February 28 one of these famous people, Jeanette Herbert, the First Lady of Utah, visited us for our Super Knight Assembly.  She attended SJHS in the years 1963 - 1965.       

Mrs. Murdock, the finance secretary at SJHS, has been friends with Mrs. Herbert since their years together at SJHS.  She contacted Mrs. Herbert to ask if she would like to come and present to our school.  “She shared a great message, ‘Success doesn’t come until we’ve had failure.’  She challenged all of us to overcome obstacles in life, whatever we’re trying to accomplish,” Mrs. Murdock said.       

Mr. VanAusdal, the principal of SJHS, said, “Since we are celebrating the last year in this school this year, we really wanted to have extraordinary people that went to this school come and present to us and see the school one last time.”  He also added that she is a great example for kids to follow.  After all, she did grow up to be the First Lady of Utah.  “She had a timely message, ‘Don’t give up- look at failure as a growing experience.’”       

Lauryn Davis, an eighth grader at SJHS, said she really liked all the examples Mrs. Herbert gave of people who did not succeed at first, but ended up being amazing.  Walt Disney was told he was not creative enough.  Albert Einstein was in lower level classes.  Thomas Edison took several years to create the light bulb.  Mrs. Herbert told us to do something extraordinary.       

Abby Kawai, an eighth grader at SJHS, said, “She taught me that we can all grow to become something great.”  She liked that Mrs. Herbert explained what it was like back when she was in Jr. High, and she really enjoyed the story about the short skirts.  Mrs. Herbert told us about when the mini skirt first came out, and there was a rule set in place at SJHS about skirt length- it had to reach your knees.  If an administrator thought that the skirt was too short, the student would have to go to the principal’s office and kneel, if the skirt reached the floor it was long enough.  If it did not, they were sent home to put on a different skirt.       

Mrs. Herbert is just one of many people that are truly extraordinary, and she got her start here, at SJHS.