High School Yearbooks
The social history of high school life is found in yearbooks
and it is said that no matter what you do to escape your past or your identity,
someone can find you in your yearbook. Even though information in some
yearbooks is sketchy, we all return to the publication, seeking clues to what
we think we remember, because information about what we were like back then
helps make us understandable to each other now.
Yearbooks are important in that they are both the symbol and
the evidence that we participated in something unique to ourselves. What is
intriguing is that what is said about a person in the yearbook very likely will
hold true throughout the person’s life. In writing social histories, set in my
hometown, as well as in my present location, I continue to be astonished anew
to find the descriptions of people I have known as fitting at the present time
as they were when they were written in high school.
Further, other than scrapbooks and diaries, which are
individually personal, yearbooks remain the best “snapshot” of a particular
school year. These documents are a keen measure of who we are and who we were,
where and when we were, and with whom we were. They are also very important in
a sense larger than ourselves. They situate us in time and place in both mind and
heart.
Yearbooks are singular in that they are the record of a
particular collection of young people who by happenstance are placed together.
They tell the story of times spent in a hundred different ways in classes,
clubs, music, sports, and simply common interests. They showcase clusters of
people as well as individuals in their activities, recollecting the wins of a
team or a band competition, as well as single accomplishments, such as breaking
a record or being honored for a special milestone. Groups of friends are shown
in poses with captions that suggest they will never, ever forget this
particular moment with this particular set of friends.
The yearbook also serves as a larger social history. Nowhere
else can one learn about traditions of a school community throughout the years,
such as Class Day or Shelf Day, Senior Class Gifts to the school, or yearbook
dedications, and sometimes class officers, team captains and the like. It also
is often the best answer to questions such as one that recently was raised at Lower Dauphin
High School
Recently I was able to locate (thanks to the Curwensville
Public Library) a copy of the very first yearbook from my own Alma Mater,
Curwensville High School. I had been
seeking this for a number of years to add to my collection of yearbooks from
1922 to 1969, the years most relevant to my research interest. I had acquired
all but three when I recently received an email that the library had received a
large collection which included two of the three yearbooks I was missing, and
one of those was my much-longed-for 1922 edition of The Echo. This first yearbook had been described in information I
had as a “collection of material that had been in the school newspaper of that
year” with a paper cover. I had expected to find broadsheets stapled together,
if I were even lucky enough to ever acquire a copy, considering how few must
have been printed with only 29 seniors in the graduating class. Imagine my
delight to discover that this 1922 book looks like both the 1923 and 1924
publications, with a soft cover, in format quite like what most yearbooks of
the time used.
It was this publication that confirmed a number of pieces of
information I knew or had guessed about persons in my hometown, just as all of
the other Echos had served as a
resource of things I remembered or conversation I had heard between and among
my mother, Kathryn Pifer, and her sisters. For example, Mother had said that
she and Kathryn Kephart had been friends from the time they had started school;
the 1922 Echo referred to these two
freshmen as “the Kathryn twins!” Also for years I had retained a vague question
about one of my elementary teachers about whom there was something unlikely/not
common about her marriage. Because gossip was unknown in our household I never
knew what it was about this married couple that was supposedly unusual. Today I
solved the mystery. When this young woman was a senior the man who would become
her husband was in sixth grade. Not scandalous by any means, but just a bit of
information, the kind of which yearbooks often can solve.
These early yearbooks also provided answers to the confusion
I encountered in confirming years of graduation (in my early search before I
had the [almost] complete set of Echos).
It was fairly common for students to move back and forth between graduating classes,
not necessarily remaining with the cohort with whom they began first grade.
Even the graduation dates of my six aunts, whose birthdates I know and,
therefore, thought I could assume their year of graduation, proved to be
confounding. Evidently the number of credits determined one’s Class Year in any
given year throughout high school. With this system more often than not the
students moved ahead and were graduated “a year early.”
In tracing the history of high school yearbooks in the
United States, the publication given recognition as the first high school
yearbook, named “The Evergreen,” appeared in 1845 in Waterford, NY.
However, it was not until the 1920s that yearbooks began to include school
activities and teachers, covering more than just the graduating seniors. Sales
campaigns began, in general, in 1925 in selling both the yearbooks as well as
the advertising found therein (however, yearbooks in Curwensville had many ads
beginning with the 1922 book).
Fifty years later, in the 1970s, yearbooks began to break
tradition, using more creativity in layout, text, coverage, and themes. Video
yearbooks made their appearance in 1980, the 1990s began displaying a stronger
journalistic style, and by the new century CDs began to make inroads.
Usually each new yearbook staff spends a lot of time
deciding on a theme which should direct the style and content of the book.
Sometimes a historical event suggests—or commands—a compelling theme, other
times a universally popular song or a movie or a television program suggests
the zeitgeist of a class, and occasionally the personality of a particular
class is so evident that it becomes the yearbook theme.
For example, “Passing the Torch,” as a tribute to John F.
Kennedy, was the favorite theme for 1964 yearbooks throughout the nation, much
as yearbooks in 1928 honored Charles A. Lindbergh. Yearbooks during World War
II featured patriotism, classes of 1949 felt compelled to be “The 49ers,” in
honor of the original gold rush of 1849; those in 1960 welcomed Alaska and Hawaii
to statehood, yearbooks during the Bicentennial were destined to commemorate
1776, while the Lower Dauphin Class of 1987 believed “It’s a Jungle Out There,”
and Lower Dauphin Class of 2010 was expected to make note of the high school’s
Golden Anniversary.
A newer type of yearbook, called Lifepages is an online version of a print yearbook, and accompanies
it rather than replaces it. It offers alumni the ability to do searches and
communicate with one another. It also allows information to be updated as
events occur. Its designer says his Lifepages
is “a social network built around the present and the past, so memories are
(online) for the rest of your life. …students can upload content, so the
yearbook is something that grows and lives throughout the school year.” (http://blog.pennlive.com/midstate_impact/print.html?entry=/201.
4/15/2011.)
While yearbooks appear to be all the same, no two are alike.
Styles of covers, layouts, and even what content is included changes from year
to year, as there is no standard manual for producing a yearbook. It often
comes as an unpleasant surprise to find that the yearbooks are not consistent
in what is included, as any particular yearbook features what was important to
its own class or its editorial staff. Most staffs don’t see the importance of
being historians as well as artists, causing difficulty to later readers. This,
however, is not a new lack. The
Clarionette (Clarion, PA) of 1925 did not identify by name anyone in their
yearbook, not even the graduating seniors.
Whether they admit it or not, people remember with uncanny
accuracy how many times their picture appeared in the yearbook and exactly what
was written under their senior picture. Years after graduation, chances are
that what is said about a person in the yearbook still holds true. The book
helps us remember both the best and the worse—or even the vicissitudes and
ironies—of life in high school.
Have you visited your own yearbook lately?
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