In one of the last stacks of boxes, on a storage rack high in the garage of my family’s old house in Kahala, one of the ancient boxes contained a surprise–a stack of my old high-school and college yearbooks. At least four years from Honolulu’s University High School, the “Lab School,” and then several years from Whitman College, where I managed to graduate. All dating to the decade of the 1960s. I have no recollection of packing the box, and the handwritten label on the side was done by my mother, so I have to assume that at one point she carefully rescued them from various things that I left at the house, and put them aside for me.
I can probably remember a couple of times over the years that I wanted to check one of the yearbooks in order to refresh my memory about an event, or a teacher, or a classmate. But honestly, that’s been a very rare occurrence.
So now what? What do you do with old yearbooks? What do I do with my own yearbooks?
Judging from what appears to be a vibrant market in old yearbooks, obvious from the results of a quick online search, there are lots of people who dump them or lose them, and then want to replace them at some point.
On the other hand, it’s strange to look back over those decades into the faces of all the young people we were–before the wars, the careers, the bosses good and bad, spouses and families, current and former–and wonder where the time, and seemingly endless opportunities, went.
So I’m back at that question. Stick the box back on a shelf in our house? Donate them as used books, along with all their long-ago teen inscriptions, and hope they aren’t purchased by someone who wants to use them against any of us?
After my dad died, I was surprised to find he had kept his senior yearbook from Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. It’s rich with handwritten notes penned by people now long dead. I searched for names I had heard him speak of, or people who visited my dad in Hawaii later in life. He maintained a strong and life-long bond with a core group of his high school friends which was broken only by death.
I found a few online musings on the question of what to do with these books.
ExperienceProject.com asks, “Why would anyone hand on to their high school yearbook forever?“. Here are a few of the varied answers were suggested.
It’s kind of fun… I guess if you are not very sentimental towards items you had growing up.. there isn’t any reason to keep them.
But think of this.. I always enjoyed seeing my parents yearbooks and old pictures. Even my grandparents. It’s like cave drawings… someone appreciates seeing them later.
That’s a lot of stone tablets to hold on too……lol
Then I found a short essay by blogger and teacher, James F. O’Neil (“What I learned: My high school yearbook“).
Receiving notification of the death of a former teacher, I page through my high school yearbook. The spirits live, as Epstein believes. I was looking to find a picture of one of my “ghost” teachers, to find a picture that might enliven a memory. There he was. His death notice showed him to be thirteen years older than I, both then and now. However, he looked so young in the picture; he was never “old.” (My graduation picture shows me at age 18.)
Opening the pages–still mostly intact after fifty years!–I find pleasure. Calm overtakes me: I see my teachers; I look into the eyes of my classmates. There is something that even thrills me. My youth? All our youth? (Except for those “old” teachers.)
Yes, those memory-filled pages (as trite as it sounds) bring smiles to my face, stories into my mind. And those teachers, those favorites, live on: history, science, Latin, math, music, religion, even Greek and some German.
Yet I could not, however, list them all from memory. When I open the book, however, I visualize and want to tell the stories. I want to recount who did what, what “battles” were fought, who still survives.
A yearbook isn’t simply a book about “years”; it is about life. It has a spiritual life of its own–even though a body has disappeared. Timeless. Though I might age, I am forever young within its pages. These pages contain so much memory of a part of my life–even, perhaps, an incalculable part.
Do you have any of your yearbooks? Did you made a decision at any point to either keep them or give them away? What would you do? And does it matter?
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Keep them. Gives you (and your loved ones) an opportunity to see that you were not always as you are now (whether that’s good or bad, can’t tell).
A couple years ago my daughter who has all the family furniture and my yearbooks asked me to go through the boxes to sort and discard. I tried, but finally said to her, I can’t, this is my life! She later mailed a few items to me. I framed the University Association of Law Wives diploma that I received for my wall. I did earn it!
I still have my high school yearbooks, but I gave my four Savitar yearbooks from the University of Missouri to my nephew. He is the head of a four-county library system in North Missouri which includes a genealogy library. The collection includes yearbooks. Here the University of Hawaii main research library’s Hawaiian Room has all the yearbooks from U.H. They are especially treasured now, since U.H. quit making yearbooks years ago.
If one has kids, one or more of them may be interested some day, especially if they decide to do genealogy stuff. I have a storage box of that kind of stuff (senior year in high school physics medal, `Iolani Bishops Award) that I will probably go through one more time in the next couple of years, and then just leave it for whoever to ‘wonder’ what to do with it some years down the road.
Otherwise, for yearbooks, contact the schools – it’s possible they may get requests for these for any number of reasons.
Or maybe your antique alley guy might be interested?
A couple years ago I went through numerous boxes in a closet to find my old academic publications to scan and post on my website. They still have meaning for me, and perhaps for others. Along the way I found my “baby book” (nude photos!) and baby blanket, and high school yearbook. None of them have current sentimental value for me; and I have no siblings and no children (that I know about!); so I tossed them. But I did save all my diplomas, including graduation from Kindergarten (red ribbon still attached) and Doctor of Spongeology (from a sponge museum in Tarpon Springs Florida) in case I ever need to prove my academic pedigree.
When I visit my Dad’s house, sometimes I look at the 2 or 3 stashed there. Out of all the people I grew up with, I’ve kept in touch with only two friends after high school. I’m not just that much into delving into a (sometimes) painful experience that was high school, so I suspect they’ll be tossed out someday.
My mom kept a lot of my old school stuff – like when I was in the 2nd grade. When she passed, my brother set it aside for me as a ‘surprise’ I suppose. It was weird to go through & remember back to that time when I did the drawing or art project or whatever, but don’t see the value in it now.
Yearbooks have value in conjuring up memories in later years. My old college roommate of 55 years ago came to to town last month.
On impulse, I grabbed a 1960 yearbook en route to a beach picnic. It showed him as part of a graduating class and me as a college newspaper reporter. His daughter and my wife got a kick out of us at much younger age.
I believe the downtown library accepts old yearbooks for their Hawaiiana section.
I should have added to what I posted above that I do keep one “yearbook” that I probably would not part with. It is the Freshman Register for the Harvard Class of 1962 – issued to students when we ENTERED rather at the conclusion of studies. It has value if only to remember people who did not survive – following the instructions of the Dean of Students to ‘look to your right, look to your left. One of the three of you will not be here at commencement.’ One who was is probably the most INfamous of classmates – Theodore John “Ted” Kaczynski.
This is a problem which I don’t have. When I was going to high school (yes, it was the University High School a few years before Ian) my parents thought that year books were a frivolous, unnecessary expense so I only got one my senior year. Then it disappeared a few years later as my parents attempted to erase all traces of three kids from their empty nest.
College was somewhat similar. No money for extras. Plus my relationship with Oregon State was strictly business. I paid them money and they provided the means for me to get an electrical engineering degree. Once that was done, I was outta there. None of this old alma mater stuff.
If you don’t want them, give them to your sister so someday she can show off “Crazy Uncle Ian” when he was just a kid.
The State Archives, Congresional library if they don’t have one. The Mormons use them for ancestry research. It matters if you have the only accessible copy. Launch to infinity or beyond like Buzz Lightyear. Or reference in the 5th demeansion……. Like old episodes of the Honeymooner’s in outer space.
As Leidy mentioned, the Hawaii Pacific section at HSL collects yearbooks. The list of what they have is at http://hawaii.sdp.sirsi.net/custom/web/hawaii_and_pacific/yearbooks.html.
My mother passed away and I have her yearbooks from 1942-1951 from a very small farming community. What do I do with them? I don;t want to throw them then way. After I look through them, I plan on calling the school and ask it they want them. If they do not want them then what? Any ideas?
I reluctantly decided to get rid of my high school and college yearbooks. But first I went through all of them and tore out the pages that had photos of myself. I will use these for a scrapbook I’m making for my children and grandchildren, so they will know what I looked like, and what I was interested in, lo those many years ago.