Yearbook memories

published February 16, 2012

in the Stockton Sentinel

Stockton, Kansas

            Sunday’s Salina Journal featured a number of stories submitted by readers who shared their tales of romance. I enjoyed reading these stories and appreciate that so many people took the time to write them and send them to the newspaper. Perhaps we should try something like that here at the Sentinel!

            Since much of my life right now centers around producing the 2012 Stockton High School yearbook, I was particularly interested to read a romance story that began on the pages of a yearbook. The story was written by Betty Price-Keeler, a Salina woman, who has been married for three years to a friend who wrote in her yearbook 64 years ago. At that time, World War II was raging, and a handsome friend who was attending college with her wrote a full page in her high school yearbook before he left to serve in the Navy. At the end of the message he wrote, “I will be back!” Mrs. Price-Keeler said they lost touch and she had married a hometown boy who was also leaving for the war. They had a lovely life together, which lasted over 60 years and, sadly, ended in his death. Six years later, while visiting someone in a retirement home, she happened to meet a lady who had the same last name as the boy who had written in her yearbook. She commented about that, and the lady said that man was a relative of hers. He was living in California and had lost his wife after 60 years of marriage. She offered to get his phone number for Mrs. Price-Keeler, who then called him and asked if he remembered her. He certainly did, and that first phone conversation led to their marriage three years ago. She said that, 64 years later, he turned the page in that same yearbook and wrote the message, “I told you I would be back!”

            While I don’t have any endearing messages such as that in any of my high school yearbooks, those books are precious to me, and I’m glad to have books from all four years. I have made notes in them as classmates or other friends got married, and kept many clippings pressed between the pages of high school friends in the news. I have also recorded the early and untimely deaths of several of our classmates.

            My husband and I were classmates – high school sweethearts. Our senior year, I was the yearbook editor and he was my business manager. Our yearbook will always be special because, even though we didn’t know it at the time, it became a chronicle of our first year together. A year after we graduated from high school, he married his editor, and after 38 years of marriage, he is still my business manager!

            While working on the SHS yearbook this year, I discovered that only about one-third of our high school students usually buy the yearbook, and I think that is really sad. We have discovered boxes full of books from past years, and we have marked these down in price in an effort to get them into the hands of those pictured in the books. These yearbooks should not go to the landfill! If anyone reading this did not buy a yearbook “way back then,” please call the high school or talk to me or Susan Schneider. We’ll try to give you a second chance to buy your yearbook. Everyone should have all four yearbooks of their high school life, and at the very least, their graduating year.

            And for all students currently in high school, especially the class of 2012, please order your Tiger yearbook! You may not think you need it, but you never know who you may want to reconnect with 60 years from now.