“I want [people] to see what life was like, a window into the past,” states Yearbook Production Manager Otis Mardon, describing his goal when creating the yearbook. Yearbooks are a historical memento, a representation of what that year held, and a collection of memories and emotions. What people valued and experienced, sports achievements, school dances, clubs, are all ways to hold onto the past nostalgically. Intrigue and curiosity were the start of this trip down memory lane. Valuing the history of Franklin, I decided to look into the archived yearbooks, looking at every yearbook with a year ending in four — 1924, 1934, 1944, etc. — held at the back of the library. “The aim?” you may ask: to echo the quote from Mardon, to look through the window into the past.
Beginning 100 years ago with the other ‘24 yearbooks, the first ones were sent out in two issues a year. During those days, it was far more common to have a large set of students graduate in January and June. This means that there were multiple established graduation ceremonies. Once an individual graduated, they were gone for good, creating the need for two yearbooks.
These books solely focused on the seniors, depicting matching class photos, achievements, and even class wills. Class wills were mementos to leave in the books and followed a specific format. Similar to people leaving their home or money to someone when going through a transition, the yearbook would feature seniors leaving a characteristic or relevant part of them to someone they knew who was remaining at the school. The 1924 class had both sweet — “Eunice Daniels, her dimple to Mrs. Wilson” — and semi-passive aggressive — “Albina Visliesel, her shyness to Audrey Wieneken”— entries.
Instead of just a simple senior quote and name next to the fancy images, the book went into the details, noting every club, sport, and future plan of each student, along with where they went to elementary and middle school. So much detail is packed into these frail, thin, paper-bound books, holding onto the memories of the year. Rowen Meiner, current copy editor, expresses the same ideas that the 1924 yearbook physically displayed. She says that she wants to “genuinely represent the school year and [show] the unique group of students that Franklin has.”
In the earlier batch of the archived books, it appears that the yearbook and the Post were similar and often included excerpts from one another. They both worked towards the goal of fairly representing the population of Franklin. This overlap of the yearbook and school newspaper continued until roughly 1954 — remember I only looked at the yearbooks ending in four. The 1954 yearbook was the first book I saw that seemed like what we consider yearbooks to be today. An innovative thing about this specific yearbook was that it was dedicated to a German exchange student who was at Franklin. There were two pages filled with this student’s life at Franklin, expressing how the student’s presence was an “outstanding experience for all.”
There were additional changes that I found in the 1964 yearbook, including the first mention of superlatives. A notable aspect of this specific yearbook was the hyperfocus on the Rose Princess and Rose Festival festivities. Pages upon pages were dedicated to following each candidate’s journey, and then the journey of the winner as they progressed.
Each yearbook had a strong personality and reflected who the people were within that year. Each was unique in its own way; that part of history is reflected in the production of our modern-day yearbooks. Rae Gates, yearbook’s production editor, speaks to this as the end goal in the creation of these memorabilia. Gates hopes that in 100 years “people will look back and think that [2024’s yearbook] is unique compared to others they’ve seen,” and that it shows the individualism of that year.
1974 had loads of pictures, more than ever before, still all in black and white. There was an effort made to start capturing the past year in images rather than journal-like entries. A page that stood out was the images of students using typewriters in the libraries; this was the first mention of a Franklin school library that I found.
The first mention of a theme for the books arose in the 1984 yearbook, “Franklin Feet,” which held images of feet on every single page along with details of specific people and their feet. Again, there was an increase in events being depicted in images; maybe it was an attempt to pull authenticity into the pages, letting the students interpret and remember the emotion of an event, rather than just putting words describing what happened. The yearbook’s Editor-In-Chief Iris Gray, speaks to the importance of covering events in an authentic way, saying, “It’s really important that we do a good job of covering as much as we can, and making sure that everything is shown authentically and in a way that makes people happy, seen, and represented, like they are a part of a school community.” She stresses that they are trying to represent the school how it wants to be seen.
1994 brought around a couple of minute changes, and this was the first yearbook I found with non-generic senior photos. A couple of decades ago, in 1974, the yearbook started doing the senior portraits in color printing, a trend that continued in the yearbooks, but they also started allowing submitted images with the typical back-against-a-tree pose. Other such timely trends were the “Hunk vs. Babe Competitions” which appeared to be a sports-related event, and a school spirit competition that involved chugging pancake syrup.
2004 brought in all the early 2000s trends; the images and theme were still in black and white, but there was more stress on animal prints. Important events and senior photos were featured in color; it was a completely normal yearbook overall.
2014 was the most recent four-ending yearbook that I looked at. The largest change? It was completely in color. This allowed me to truly see the creativity of the students making the book. Sidney Whitehead, a staff member of the yearbook staff, attests to this creative aspect, saying that he likes “that [they] create all of the pages from scratch.” He explains that as page makers they “have a decent amount of creative freedom when creating pages.”
As you start to read through this next yearbook, think about the thought, time, and effort that went into making it. Remember that each part had something behind it that was inspiring enough to be featured. Each page in Franklin’s yearbook comes from a “community that was vibrant, different, and amazing,” as staff member Tallulah Hutchinson puts it. All of the pages are full of history which deserves to stay alive. Each yearbook is a story “and our yearbook staff is highlighting those moments for everyone. Hopefully we get it right and tell the story of the year for Franklin High School,” states yearbook teacher Adam Souza.
