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Rah, Rah, Sis Koom Bah! Alma Maters

© Mark W. Swarthout

Want a picture of that great grandfather? Have you thought about their high school or college yearbooks? No, you probably don't have them still laying around, but it a possibility that it is stashed away on some bookshelf or corner of the attic. I know where mine are! I'll bet they exist in the library of the school. Most places have them on file.

First item, of course, is to know whether they attended an institute of higher education. This might be determined by the family legend, a diploma, mention from a biographical clip found in an obituary, wedding announcement or other article or the possession of a class ring from the school.

So once you have determined that the individual in question had attended one of the many possible institutions of higher learning, whether it was college, nursing school or other, time to search!

The simplest place to start is on the web, searching for the school. If it still exists, and wants to convince the public that it continues to provide a viable service, it will assuredly have a web site up and operational. Two things to look for, first, the history of the school, a way to connect to the time frame your individual attended there.

The second item to find is the alumni association. The alumni association of an institution exists to provide services to the graduates and provide a source of income to the school. They will normally have a very complete listing of students, past and present. Through them you may be able to locate information on the individual's degree, a picture of their graduating class that might be labeled, perhaps they even held a position in the student body or a fraternity. They might even tell you that their name is engraved in a trophy still sitting shining in a cabinet in the main administrative building.

The school library will normally have a copy of all the past yearbooks, often stored away in the historical section. Another location might be the yearbook staff themselves. When I was on the staff at my University, we had a huge shelf full of back issues. It is pretty common to refer to these back issues to look through them for ideas, past history and to either duplicate what might have been done in the past or to avoid repetition.

Attending law school at night, there was little to do between classes, unless you really thought the studying was worth while. I became familiar with the faces of the lawyers that had graduated in the years before me. And I mean YEARS before me. Neatly framed on the walls of the hallways were pictures of the previous graduates. The photos went back into the 1800s with the class size growing, the hairstyles changing and each picture neatly labeled! If the place in question has a historian, they can probably tell you if there are similar locations or galleries within the school.

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