The year was 1954. Ike was in the White House. Bill Haley and the Comets rocketed to the top of the pop charts. A first-class stamp cost 3 cents and schoolchildren first got Jonas Salk's polio vaccine.

In Redding (population 11,500), 17 young women from far-flung towns like Weaverville, Fall River Mills and Tehama moved in together -- the first residents of Shasta College's women's dormitory.

Fifty years later, seven of the original roommates in that two-story house on Pine Street gathered in Redding to share memories of their long-ago college days.

Over lunch at Pio Loco, in the old Pine Street School building, they reminisced about dating, curfews and their beloved housemother, Ella Nora Key, affectionately known as "Auntie."

They presented Shasta College Foundation Executive Director Scott Thompson with a scrapbook they've compiled over the years, which chronicles previous reunions in 1965, 1982 and 1999.

"Living together for two years fresh out of high school and all coming from small towns, we just bonded and have stayed in touch," said Katie Hisken, 69, who grew up in Tehama, where her father was postmaster.

"We've all remained friends over the years. It's been a wonderful blessing in our lives," said the Sacramento resident and retired Wells Fargo Bank employee.

Room and board at the dorm was $1,200 a year, recalled Arbuckle, and included breakfast and dinner six days a week. Shasta College opened its doors in west Redding in 1950 with 26 original faculty members. President Harry S. Truman spoke at the college's Thompson Field that year, as part of a celebration of California's centennial. In the mid-'60s the two-year community college moved to its current campus, 337 acres along Stillwater Creek in east Redding.

It's not academics that Hisken remembers from that time. It's waving to boys cruising Pine and Market streets, eating "the best burgers in the world" at The Shack nearby, hanging out at the U-Name-Us drive-in on North Market Street (known then as "Miracle Mile"), buying "Cokes, candy bars and aspirin" at Hinkle's Market, dancing to the band at Ricardo's nightclub and "parties at Shasta Lake with a keg of beer."

Curfew was 11 p.m. on weekdays, she recalled. Girls who got locked out had to enter through housemother Key's room. They might also have to deal with Marva Notestine, the college's dean of women.

Hisken's scrapbook contains black-and-white snapshots of the dorm after a snowstorm, group pictures of the "girls" in their pajamas and gatherings at the Shasta College boys dorm, then in a house on West Street.

The dorm building (dubbed "Shastina Manor"), where the girls slept three to a room, was demolished in the mid-'60s. It's now a car lot. House mother and Tennessee native Key, whom Hisken remembers as "quiet, sweet and a wonderful cook," died in 1984 at age 88.

Referring to an article in Friday's Record Searchlight headlined "Life of luxury finds its way into college dorms," Hisken chuckled, noting that her dorm sported more Spartan amenities than plasma TVs and designer furniture. "It had a pay phone, a Coke machine and a piano." Even so, "we had a really wonderful life," Hisken said.

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