A Year Book of Their Own

Our class did do one thing no other had done for some 20 years and I did become the driving force behind that. Many class members expressed a disappointment that the school had not published a yearbook for many, many years.

I went to our superintendent, Mr. Young, and told him of our concern and he said the reason no annuals had been printed was because of the large amount of work it took and the lack of funding. I assured him the class would work on the yearbook and we’d find a way to finance it without school district funds.

Mr. Young, probably thinking it would be an impossible challenge, told me he would agree if I could get signatures of 75 per cent of the class saying they would support the project.

We got those signatures and went to work. My association with the newspaper helped us get an offset printer to publish the book at a reasonable price and my folks’ experience in advertising helped me solve the financing problem.

Most annual staffs sold advertising to raise money and then give the sponsor space in proportion to his donation. Instead of that, we solicited local businesses for donations with the stipulation the amount would be listed at the back of the annual.

This served two purposes. The more prestigious firms did not want the community or their competitors to out-do them, so their donations were sizable. Secondly, instead of adding to the cost of printing by taking a lot of pages for advertising, we used just one page to list the donors.

It was one of my biggest disappointments not to be named editor of the annual since I felt I had been instrumental in getting it approved. Instead, Marc Houlihan and I were named co-editors. Marc was quite talented and there was no doubt of his ability, but it was just one more time he had bested me.

He was a talented trombone player, a baritone vocalist, and excellent actor. Declamatory contests were popular in that time and it seemed no matter which division I chose, Marc would follow suit and beat me to win the district entry. One year I waited until the very last moment (and after Marc had already declared) to select my division. Wouldn’t you know, he changed to my division just hours ahead of the local contest, switched to my classification, and won.

Marc’s post-graduation goal was to go to Hollywood, not to be an actor or director but to become a producer. Whether he ever made it or not, no one really knows. He came to our l5th class reunion but no one has heard of him since. In all these years, I have watched credit lines on movies but have yet to see his name.

With the donations and sales of annuals, enough money was raised to produce the yearbook. We finished up copy for it just after the second semester started in January and sent it to the printers with the promise it would be ready by our May graduation. That didn’t happen, but because of the delay we were able to get some of the late happenings of our senior year in the book, such as results of the national music contest.

That event, which was held in St. Joseph, Missouri, threw a crimp into our junior-senior prom. Many of the class members had to leave the dance early because they had to get up at 4 a.m. the next day to leave for the contest.