Reliving Our Past

By Kate Mutch, Public Service Librarian

April 29 , 2009

“Have you ever glanced through an old yearbook to find a clever saying like “2 good 2 B 4gotten” scrawled in the margin? 

Perhaps you’ve encountered some of these:  “I’ll never forget how much fun we had in Chem class;” “Have a great summer;” “Homeroom with you was such a blast;” “Suzie, you are a real swell gal;”  “I’ll remember you forever.”

We thought we were so clever all those years ago when signing our friends’ yearbooks. We also thought we were original with our comments and yet, through the decades, yearbooks are filled with the same notes and promises.

Yearbooks are a wonderful way to refresh our memories of friends from long ago.  They can remind us of times when beating a rival school in football was our greatest worry, or of just how good we looked in those cat eye glasses or duck tail haircuts!

Some look to yearbooks for genealogy research on parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents.  They might track down friends of relatives in an effort to discover information. Perhaps a child who has lost a parent desires to hear stories from friends about what their mother or father was like as a teenager.

People access old yearbooks for a variety of reasons and many begin their search at their local library.  Over the past several months, your Natrona County Public Library has been working to collect yearbooks from Natrona County schools, Casper College and the University of Wyoming.

NCPL’s yearbook collection started with a well worn copy of Natrona County High School’s 1959 yearbook. Many in Natrona County will recognize the significance of that year as the issue including Lynn Vincent and Dick Cheney. The collection has grown to include more than 80 yearbooks from local schools.

The library has several gaps in the collection and is looking for the following years to help complete the set.

Midwest High School: seeking all years between 1951 and 2007.

Kelly Walsh High School: seeking all years between 1966 and 2007.

Natrona County High School: needs include 1912-1915, 1918-1920, 1924-1925,
1928-1929, 1932, 1939-1951, 1953-1954, 1956-1965, 1967, and 1969- 2007.

Casper College: needs include 1946-1952, 1954, 1961, and 1974.

University of Wyoming: needs include 1910-1915, 1917-1918, 1921, 1925, 1934-1939, 1941, 1944-1946, 1951-1953, 1955, 1960-1962, 1967, and 1975 – 1988.

Middle School Yearbooks have been the most difficult to find and so far the collection has only 1963, 1964 and 1965 editions from Dean Morgan and 1964, 1966 and 1967 from East Junior High.  Any other volumes from any of the Junior High Schools, including CY Middle School and Frontier Middle School, would be welcome.

If you have any of these volumes and would like to donate them to the library please drop them off at the library’s front desk or call 577-READ for more information. If you own them and are not ready to relinquish them yet, please consider leaving them to the library in your will. This provides an excellent way to share your cherished memories with many future generations.

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