Community
Central High Gets First Yearbook, The CHS Echo, in 1951
By |
Five members of the original Central High School Yearbook Staff from 1951 at a recent lunch meeting, each holding their own copies of The CHS Echo, Central High's first yearbook.
Front row, seated (L to R): Jean Hodgeson Nauman, June Eisworth Theriot.
Back row, Standing (L to R): Paula Steppe Felder, Cathryn Lloyd Browning, and Carmel Montgomery McLaughlin. Unable to attend was Carney Watts, Athletics Editor.
Submitted by Elva Jo Crawford
Recently, five of the original nine student members of Central High's first yearbook staff met at Central Perk for lunch and to recall putting together the school's first yearbook in the spring of 1951. It was the beginning of a great tradition for Central. This first yearbook was titled The CHS Echo.
Prior to 1951 Central High had never had a yearbook. One of its teachers, Miss Anna Mae Morgan, had the idea that if all the other schools in Baton Rouge had a yearbook, certainly Central should have one, too. So, she organized a student staff and she herself assumed the responsibility of being the first faculty sponsor. (The year prior to this Miss Morgan had also been instrumental in getting a Beta Club chartered at Central.)
According to these original student staffers, this first yearbook was put together at quite a hectic pace. June Eisworth Theriot, who was the Editor, and Carmel Montgomery McLaughlin, who was the business manager, both laughingly look back at some of the things they say they can't believe they left out, like the last names of all the underclassmen. Only the graduating seniors' photographs were labeled with both the first and last names of the students.
With 60 total pages, the '51 yearbook included some school history, individual photos of the faculty, and the 9th-12th grade students, group photos of the 7th and 8th grade classes, photos of the campus buildings, school sporting events, and photos of extracurricular events, the band, and school clubs, as well as an advertisement section.
The Central student body at that time, including elementary, junior high, and high school, all on the same campus at Sullivan and Hooper, numbered 836. Today, 62 years later, there are more than five times that number of students in Central Schools.
That same year, besides having a yearbook for the first time, Central also had a school cafeteria for the first time, opened in November of 1950. Prior to having a school cafeteria, students brought their lunch from home or bought lunch from a private vendor on campus, Mr. Harris Poche. Or they could walk across the street to buy a sandwich from Miss Jodie Edwards' store.
At the same time that the cafeteria was opened, a new concrete block gymnasium also was built and opened adjacent to the new cafeteria. Cathryn Lloyd Browning, who was secretary on the yearbook staff as well as on the girls’ basketball team, recalls that it was the principal, Mr. J .A. Smith, who made the decision that the girls' basketball team would be the first to play a game in the new gymnasium. This girls' team went on to play in the state tournament. Graduation for the 32 seniors that year was also held in this new gymnasium.
The lady staffers described riding school buses back then as adventurous, to put it mildly, with too many stories about those old bus rides to record here. Early on the buses were privately owned and driven by men or senior high boys. Later in their school years women were eventually allowed to drive the buses. They remember that one of the men bus drivers, Mr. Asa Rester, would pick up the kids during the week for school. Then he would return on Sundays to pick them up for Sunday School and Church at Zoar Baptist.
Most of these original yearbook staffers still reside in Central or visit here regularly. Besides watching an ever changing group of Central schools, each of them, over the last 80 years, has witnessed many changes in the Central community as well. All of them were around to see electricity put in their homes for the first time, watching that first electrical cord with a light bulb at the end of it being suspended from the living room ceiling. It was amazing to recall some of the misconceptions that people had back then about electricity; some thinking that you had to keep a light bulb in the socket at all times to keep the electricity from running out and being wasted.
They also saw telephone service progress form many homes not having any phone at all, to 8-party lines, 4-party lines, 2-party lines to private phone lines. June Eisworth Theriot says that growing up they did not have a phone in their home; but, that there was one in her dad's store. She says it was not uncommon for her dad, Mr. George Eisworth, to have to open the store in the middle of the night for someone in the community to make an important phone call.
At the lunch meeting each of the yearbook staffers was presented with a small copy of a color painting of the red brick Elementary School building as it looked on their 1951 campus, done by Shirley Theriot Browning. (See pg. 4 for painting) Mr. Carney Watts, the editor for Athletics, was unable to attend. Five of the original staff have passed away. This includes Miss Morgan as well as three of the student staff members Jimmy Fair, Carmen Harrington, Jo Mixon Gleason, and \Shirley Theriot Browning, who passed away Sunday. (See pg. 14 for obituary.)
Thank you and congratulations to these yearbook staffers for being part of the start of a great tradition for Central High and the Central Community.
* A photocopy of the 1951 Yearbook can be viewed in the Central Branch of the EBRP Library in the Central/Greenwell Springs Historical Society section behind the reference desk. (In 1952 the title of the Central yearbook was changed to The Wildcat.)
1 Comment