Eveline’s Senior Year: Junior-Senior Reception, Part 1

Posted on November 26, 2022 by Kathy Morales

I shared a photo of my grandmother Eveline Coates’ high school graduating class in Mystic, Iowa a few weeks (now months!) ago. Along with the photo and her diploma, a couple of other mementos were saved. One is the program for the Junior-Senior Banquet in honor of the graduating Seniors. It was interesting to see how World War I seemed to be the overarching theme of the festivities. I decided to take a deeper look at what her life may have been like during the 1917-1918 school year. There was a lot going on, a war and the beginning of an influenza pandemic to name the two biggies. The list of related posts is getting long, so I’ll link them at the bottom.

At last I have arrived at the inspiration for this series – the program for the Junior-Senior Reception. I was struck by the theme of war in an event celebrating graduation from high school.

The newspaper write-up of the event offers a peek into the setting:

Page 6 of Semi Weekly Iowegian,published in Centerville, Iowa on Thursday, May 16th, 1918

Sometimes I can’t help but giggle at typos – like “appropriated” names, “pickels,” and a three-piece orchestra that may have been on the menu. I was not familiar with the flower smilax and wondered if that was another typo. No, it was not.

Smilax is native to Iowa, and rarely spreads to the extent that it is weedy. However, since it is found on the edges of woods frequented by people, and often has thorns that get tangled in clothing or puncture skin, it is often considered undesirable. Also known as greenbriar, catbriar, and carrion flower (due to unpleasant odor of flowers).
https://crops.extension.iastate.edu/encyclopedia/smilax-greenbriar

Eveline and her classmates each received a pink rose from Faye Wilson, a former teacher and guest of honor. The decorations of white apple blossoms along side smilax, pink and green candles, and a canopy of paper ribbons must have created a lovely setting for the reception.
But …

… the cover of the program sets a different tone for the evening, highlighting the last stanza of the poem “One Country,” by Frank Lebby Stanton.

After all,
‘Tis Freedom wears the loveliest coronal
Her brow is the morning; in the sod
She breathes the breath of patriots; every clod
Answers her call
And rises like a wall
Against the foes of liberty and God.

The newspaper clipping continues:

There are three main headings in the schedule of events for the reception:
Menu, Toasts, and Program.
Under the heading of Toasts are the subheadings:
In Camp
In Active Service
Activities at the Front

… themes of war in juxtaposition to pink roses and a dainty luncheon menu.

I don’t know if parents were invited to the reception, but members of the junior class, senior class, and teachers and school administrators were there. Possibly 40-45 people, not including parents. I’ve tried to imagine how the the evening progressed. I have no idea. Perhaps John LaMasney, as toastmaster, acted as emcee and introduced each of the other speakers. And what of the quotes in the program that accompanied the name of each individual? Did they serve as prompts for the toast that each would give? Perhaps some of the original sources were familiar to the students from their studies of poetry and literature. Who chose the the military phrases that framed the order of events? Who selected the quotes? Members of the Junior class? Teachers?

Since I’ve spent time researching the origins of the quotations, it would be a waste if I didn’t include them. I’ve linked to the sources where possible so you can read in full if you like.

A newspaper clipping from November of 1917 provides the names of Junior class members who attended a party at the home of Irene Lames. This was helpful to identify some of those who participated in the reception as members of the Junior class. However, just because someone attended a party for the juniors does not mean they were members of the junior class. Two of Eveline’s future sisters-in-law – my grandfather’s sisters, attended and, by my calculations, Ethel Hoskins would have been a junior, but not her older sister Edna.

Page 4 of Centerville Daily Iowegian And Citizen,published in Centerville, Iowa on Friday, October 5th, 1917

Another clipping reveals how closely the Junior class experienced this time of war. Less than a month before the Junior-Senior Reception, many of them attended a surprise party for a classmate who was off to the Navy.

I just happened to stumble upon the clipping above when I searched for names of students who gave toasts at the reception. There may have been other students who had enlisted prior to the end of the school year. (They were not required to register for the draft at this age.) Of the eighteen graduating seniors, only three were male. In addition to the war, it was common in this community for boys to leave school before graduation and go to work, often in the coal mines.

John LaMasney, the toast master, was a member of the Junior class. The newspaper account of a sad accident in which one of John’s younger brothers died in November of 1918 reveals that the large LaMasney family operated a boarding house in Mystic.

The quote under the Toast Master section of the program is from the poem “The Man Behind the Gun,” by Alice Rolit Coe.

https://archive.org/details/lyricsoffirandfo00coeaiala/page/n97/mode/2up

The first group of toasts fall under the heading: In Camp: The Call to Mess, Daily Drill, and Learning the Signals.

The Call to Mess – toast made by Blanche Cook, a Junior. She or her sister Claudine are noted as the authors of the “Late Happenings from Mystic” section of the Centerville Daily Iowegian and Citizen newspaper in a number of issues, so she must have kept up with all the news that was fit to print. This is one quote I wasn’t able to identify. If anyone knows, please share your knowledge!

Daily Drill – toast given by Lazelle Helme, a member of the Junior class. I found a lengthy article written by one of Lazelle’s friends about a road trip they made to Des Moines with a group. It provides some insight into the times as these high schoolers “motored” over Iowa roads and visited the cantonment outside Des Moines. Unfortunately, the copy of the second page of the newspaper article is quite poor. Lazelle was prompted by the words, “Every stroke shall be repaid,” a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay On Compensation. I have not read the essay in its entirety, but others have said that Emerson is writing about the law of karma, about cause and effect, that bringing good into the world brings good into the world (or the opposite) because that is the nature of the world. (Extreme paraphrasing on my part.) The paragraph that contains the quote above follows:

The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.

Learning the Signals – toast given by David Lodwick. The program does not specify if this was the junior or elder. David Lodwick, Sr. was one of the partners in the Lodwick Brothers Coal Company. Two of Eveline’s brothers and possibly her father worked at the Diamond Block Mine #12, one of the mines owned by the Lodwicks. David Lodwick, Sr. was also president of the school board. David Lodwick, Jr. was a member of the Senior Class. My guess is that the toast was made by the president of the school board, simply because the program lists one boy and one girl in each section and the other toasts are made my teachers or school administrators. Again – just guessing.

The quote, “So do we put our life into every act” is also from the Emerson essay. It appears in the paragraph below:

The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on eternity, — all find room to consist in the small creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation.
https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/compensation.html

The next group of toasts fall under the category In Active Service: Off for the Boches, Farewell, Regimental Marches, and With the Colors.

Off for the Boches – toast given by Arthur McDanolds, a senior. I was unfamiliar with the term “Boches” and had to look it up. Boche is a pejorative used to refer to Germans, particularly German soldiers. It is thought to have derived from a French slang word for head or cabbage – thus thick-headed or blockhead, slow, troublesome. I found quite a few French propaganda posters that used the term, not many American posters. This one harkens back to a previous post about food.

W. A. Rogers Put the Boche Where He Belongs. c.1917

The quote to prompt Arthur McDanolds is from a poem by James Russell Lowell, “The Vision of Sir Launfal,” about a nobleman who goes on a quest to find the Holy Grail. The poem was first published in 1848 and was a popular school text, reprinted every year until after the turn of the century. The stanza which contains this quote:

“My golden spurs now bring to me,
And bring to me my richest mail,
For to-morrow I go over land and sea
In search of the Holy Grail;
Shall never a bed for me be spread,
Nor shall a pillow be under my head,
Till I begin my vow to keep;
Here on the rushes will I sleep,
And perchance there may come a vision true
Ere day create the world anew.”
Slowly Sir Launfal’s eyes grew dim,
Slumber fell like a cloud on him,
And into his soul the vision flew.
The Vision of Sir Launfal
by: James Russell Lowell
from: The Vision of Sir Launfal 1848

Farewell – toast by Phoebe Kingsbury, a senior. Does the quote “We can no longer stay with you” ring a bell with any of the musicians reading? With such solemn and philosophical sources for the other quotes, I found it amusing that these words come straight from the lyrics of There is a Tavern in the Town. According to Wikipedia, it is a traditional folk song first published the 1883 edition of William H. Hill’s Student Songs.

There is a tavern in the town, in the town
And there my true love sits him down, sits him down,
And drinks his wine as merry as can be,
And never, never thinks of me.

Chorus: Fare thee well, for I must leave thee,
Do not let this parting grieve thee,
And remember that the best of friends
Must part, must part.
Adieu, adieu kind friends, adieu, adieu, adieu,
I can no longer stay with you, stay with you,
I will hang my harp on the weeping willow tree,
And may the world go well with thee.

He left me for a damsel dark, damsel dark,
Each Friday night they used to spark, used to spark,
And now my love who once was true to me
Takes this dark damsel on his knee.
And now I see him nevermore, nevermore;
He never knocks upon my door, on my door;
Oh, woe is me; he pinned a little note,
And these were all the words he wrote:
Oh, dig my grave both wide and deep, wide and deep;
Put tombstones at my head and feet, head and feet
And on my breast you may carve a turtle dove,
To signify I died of love.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_a_Tavern_in_the_Town

Regimental Marches – toast by Miss Beem. Esther Beem was the music teacher at Mystic High School, originally from the town of Chariton in Appanoose County. Finally! I found a photo of someone named here! Ancestry has the 1914 Chariton High School yearbook online. These words accompany her photo: “Her air, her manner, all who saw admired.”

Esther Beem, Charitonian, Chariton High School, 1914, Chariton, Iowa

A clipping from the local paper provides an account of an operetta performed by the high school glee clubs benefitting the work of the Junior Red Cross. I like finding more information about things I previously wrote about for this series!

Page 8 of Centerville Daily Iowegian And Citizen,published in Centerville, Iowa on Tuesday, April 30th, 1918

“There’s music in all things, if men had ears,” seems an appropriate prompt for a toast from the music teacher. It is a line from Don Juan: Canto The Fifteenth, by George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron), from the following stanza:

And as for love–O love!–We will proceed.
The Lady Adeline Amundeville,
A pretty name as one would wish to read,
Must perch harmonious on my tuneful quill.
There’s music in the sighing of a reed;
There’s music in the gushing of a rill;
There’s music in all things, if men had ears:
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.

With the Colors – toast by Miss Landers. Mary Landers was the Domestic Science teacher at Mystic High School. I think I found a photo of Miss Landers in the 1909 Centerville High School yearbook available on ancestry.com

The local newspaper mentions Miss Landers on several occasions, preparing refreshments or meals for civic meetings.

Page 6 of Semi Weekly Iowegian,published in Centerville, Iowa on Monday, March 4th, 1918

Another clipping details a picnic with the Freshman class, providing a glimpse perhaps, of the relationship she had with her students. And another mention of the Junior Red Cross which I missed when researching earlier posts.

Page 4 of Centerville Daily Iowegian And Citizen,published in Centerville, Iowa on Friday, April 26th, 1918

“Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears are all with thee,” is the toast prompt for Miss Landers. They are the last lines of the poem The Building of the Ship, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
‘T is of the wave and not the rock;
‘T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee, — are all with thee!

Since I have taken a lengthy and winding path through the program for the reception, I’m going to stop here and finish in another post. Otherwise, it may take me another month to finish this one!

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday, where the photos of Miss Beem and Miss Landers, who are not mothers and daughters and are not wearing hats, are the closest I have come to matching the prompt photo. Please visit other responses to the prompt photo here: Sepia Saturday

Eveline’s Senior Year: Grandma Was in a Play After All

Posted on November 5, 2022 by Kathy Morales

I was in the middle of writing what I knew was the next post in this series. I was doing a little newspaper research for that post when I found something at about 11:00 Saturday night (the day I had hoped to post it!), not for the post I was writing, but something I needed for the previous post.

Sometimes search terms bring us what we are looking for. Sometimes we use all the search terms we can think of in all possible configurations and spellings, with and without quotations marks … and come up empty. As I read this information that arrived too late, I sat back in my chair, no amusement on my face. Now? Really? I needed you weeks ago.

My previous post was about my grandmother and the Mystic High School Senior Class Play. I wrote things like:

And who played the parts of Alec Fraser, a young author married to Edna.
Charles Ramsey, a friend of the family, who is responsible for “Jim.”
and James Barry, friend of Charles, who is willing to do a lot for Vivian?
If only Eveline lived in Centerville, the county seat, rather than Mystic. The newspaper listed all of the students and the parts they played in the Centerville senior class play and many more details for other senior events as well.

I was unable to find any details about Senior Class night, which occurred the night before commencement. I can only guess that it was a party atmosphere to celebrate their last night together as classmates.

Trying to finish the post I was working on, I searched for the name Lodwick, the surname of one of Eveline’s classmates, who was mentioned in the Junior-Senior Reception program.

Page 5 of Semi Weekly Iowegian,published in Centerville, Iowa on Monday, April 22nd, 1918

And there it was – the names of the students and what parts they played. Unfortunately, I still can’t identify any of the students in the class photo except for Alice Tingle, who would one day be Eveline’s sister-in-law.

But look at the last paragraph in the clipping: “The other Seniors will present ‘Georgia’s Wedding Gown’ or ‘Who’s to Inherit?’ on class night.” So … those who didn’t have a part in the Senior Class Play “Why Not Jim?” would not be left out completely. But which play did they perform? And could I find a copy of the play or at least some information about it? I found a reference to the play “Who’s to Inherit?” on the internet, but I could never find “Georgia’s Wedding Gown.”

I went back to the local newspaper again, trying several search terms. What finally worked? “Gown”. And there it was.

Page 4 of Semi Weekly Iowegian,published in Centerville, Iowa on Monday, April 29th, 1918

“Georgianna” had been misspelled as “Georgia” in the first article. Ah well. I found it.

So grandma Eveline played the part of Madge Gilliard in the play “Georgianna’s Wedding Gown.” The play, by author Bell Bayless, is described in a 1914 booksellers newsletter as “a farce in two acts” and the publisher as “Dick & Fitz,” which I eventually learned was Dick & Fitzgerald.

I was about to give up locating a copy of the play when I finally found it by searching the name of the character Grandma played, Madge Gilliard. I almost wish I hadn’t. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

In this series, I’ve written about The Red Cross, smallpox, coal mining, food conservation, immigration, the draft, Eveline’s family, and more. One thing I did not delve into was race. The “gift” of locating the play Grandma was in compels me to acknowledge this influence on Grandma’s life as well.

The first hint of where this might lead was finding a Wikipedia entry about the publishing company, Dick and Fitzgerald.

Eric Lott cites them as one of the leading publishers circa 1850 of songbooks (typically just lyrics, not melodies) of the popular blackface minstrel songs of the time, which he characterizes as “little lyric volumes of mass-produced racist caricature.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_%26_Fitzgerald

Sigh.

There were not many black families in Appanoose County at the time and I read somewhere along the way that a number of them had been recruited from Missouri or other parts south to work in the coal mines. What the men who moved their families to Appanoose County did not know until they showed up for work was that they had been recruited and hired as strikebreakers. Scabs. They did not receive a warm welcome.

In one class photo of Eveline in elementary school, there is one black girl in the picture of about thirty children.

There are no black teens in the 1918 Senior Class photo. Eveline wrote an autobiography as a school assignment when she was about sixteen. In it she wrote:

After spending four years of delightful work and play here, I started on my way to the Central Ward. The children there were strangers to me and there were so many that for some time I was afraid to try any pranks and when I got over this feeling, I was told that I was old enough to act like a lady. Well I did, for it wasn’t but a few days later, when with some of the other girls I found myself in a big quarrel with some colored girls. That afternoon the professor for some reason or other kept coming into the room and it was with a sigh of relief that we marched out of school that night without even a scolding.

Grandma did not share details of what the quarrel was about.

Back to the play …

The setting of the play is the home of Madge Gilliard, a young, single woman of about 20. Her parents are out of town. Georgianna is a servant in the home. The time of the play is noted as “the present,” and since the play was written in 1914, this production in 1918 was representative of the present.

Costumes, characteristics of the characters, props needed, and stage directions.

The gist of the play is that Georgianna hopes to marry her beau right away, but doesn’t have a white gown to wear. She took her aunt’s funeral shroud, but it was eaten by a calf when she set it out to dry. At Madge’s house, she takes a white dress and hat out of the closet while she is cleaning and wants to buy them from Madge, but Madge does not want to part with them. Madge and her guests decide to make a wedding gown for Georgianna.

Nice enough story.

But the play features racist caricatures and language and the black characters speak in distorted Black language. The lines for Grandma’s character include “that” word as well as others.

I have questions.
Who chose this play rather than Who’s to Inherit?, the other play considered? That play has no black characters or racial stereotypes.
Did the students vote?
Did the teacher in charge select it?
Did students think it would be a test of their acting chops to play characters unlike themselves?
Did anyone have reservations about anything in the play?
Did the students perform in blackface?

I can guess, but obviously can’t answer any of my questions. I can only point to the popularity of minstrel shows and entertainment of this nature at the time. The frequent carnivals that came to Appanoose County usually included a minstrel show. I remember finding a newspaper clipping several years ago about a minstrel show performed at church – the Methodist Church – if I remember correctly. And by 1920, the KKK was gaining a foothold in Appanoose County. The editor of the Centerville newspaper apparently put up quite a fight with them.

Under Jesse Beck, The Iowegian waged a fierce — and ultimately successful — fight against the Ku Klux Klan in southern Iowa, where the KKK had gained a foothold that modern Iowans would find astonishing. The paper editorialized against the KKK on its front page and faced reprisals from Klan supporters, Mills told us.
https://www.carrollspaper.com/opinion/centerville-iowegian-newspaper-that-fought-kkk-in-1920s-goes-down-to-coronavirus-in-2020/article_e5856890-9920-11ea-b44b-7fbd1fe848b7.html

I have struggled to find words to close this post, but none that seem fitting have come to me. I was sad and disheartened to read the play and to imagine Eveline and her classmates performing in it and being entertained by it … for Senior Class Night, no less.

As for Eveline, her interactions with people of color were limited by the part of the country where she grew up and lived out her life. I never heard her speak the words that she apparently delivered in the play and I never heard her disparage anyone because of the color of their skin or ethnicity. But just as patriotism, frugality, and service were heavy in the air in 1918, so was racism. Young Eveline lived and breathed an environment that unquestionably influenced her and her classmates. As we all do.

I wish I could ask Grandma about that play.

Maybe I don’t know how to finish this post because it is an unfinished story. I wish we could say that our racist past is all in the past, but we know it is not. The past remains with us – sometimes blatantly obvious, but often unrecognized, unacknowledged, and exerting more influence than we are willing to recognize.

A series of search terms to tell a simple story delivered a hit.

This is my very late response to Sepia Saturday for October 22.

Eveline’s Senior Year: Senior Class Play

Posted on September 17, 2022 by Kathy Morales

The week before commencement was a busy one for Eveline. The Junior-Senior Reception (which I am skipping over for the time-being) was Friday evening, May 10th. Two days after the reception was the Baccalaureate Sermon, followed by the class play on Tuesday, class night on Thursday, and commencement on Friday. Before and during this week, the seniors rehearsed the play and practiced for commencement. I’ll bet there was shopping too – as students planned what to wear to the reception, class night, and for the graduation ceremony. In the class photo, all of the students are wearing caps and gowns, but the girls, especially, might have worn a new dress underneath. And what about final exams? Were the seniors also applying for jobs or college or working to learn a trade? Doing extra chores in the absence of an older brother drafted to military service? As it is today, the end of the school year was a busy time for the graduating seniors of Mystic and for their families.

Mystic High School Graduation Invitation, Class of 1918,
Mystic, Iowa

Performing a class play before graduation is not something that we did when I graduated from high school, nor when my children graduated, but it seems to have been a common practice at the time.

The Senior Class Play was a one-act comedy, “Why Not Jim?” written by Helen F. Bagg. Ms. Bagg seems to have written quite a number of light-hearted plays that were often performed by high school students.

The price of admission was 15 cents and 25 cents. The school principal, Neva Prior went to Centerville to shop the Wednesday before this busy week. Maybe she needed something to wear for commencement, or supplies for one of the events.

Semi Weekly Iowegian, Page 6, Centerville, Iowa
1918 May 9

The play was staged at the Strand Theater in Mystic. I wish I could find an older photo of the outside of the building.

Strand Theater, Mystic, Iowa about 1972, accessed from Facebook

A digital copy of the play Why Not Jim is available from the Internet Archive of the Library of Congress.

We can try to imagine the set on the stage of the Strand Theater.

Probably the Strand Theater, Mystic, Iowa about 1930-1931, accessed from Facebook

The play called for a cast of nine characters.

There were eighteen graduating seniors. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any newspaper accounts or other sources that named who played the characters or how the play was received.

There are three male characters in the play and three boys in Eveline’s graduating class, so I’ll assume each of the male members of the senior class had a part to play. Unfortunately, I have yet to identify anyone in the class photo other than Eveline and Alice Tingle, her future sister-in-law. But I do know their names. The names of the young men are: Art J. McDanolds, David E. Lodwick, and Clarence H. Swanson. But who is who?

And who played the parts of Alec Fraser, a young author married to Edna.
Charles Ramsey, a friend of the family, who is responsible for “Jim.”
and James Barry, friend of Charles, who is willing to do a lot for Vivian?

A description of the costume requirements provides more information about casting the parts.

If I were to take a guess, I’d guess student #1 in the part of Fraser, #2 as Ramsey, and #3 as Barry. But what do I know?

There were only five parts for the fifteen senior girls. Did one of the students fill the role of director or did one of the teachers have that responsibility? There were costumes to prepare, backdrops to paint, doors and windows and a window seat to build, props to gather, tickets and money to handle, the stage to light, make up to apply, and costume changes to help with. It would be fun to know if my grandmother acted in the play or was one of the crew. I would guess she was not an actor, unless that was a side of her personality that I never saw.

If only Eveline lived in Centerville, the county seat, rather than Mystic. The newspaper listed all of the students and the parts they played in the Centerville senior class play and many more details for other senior events as well.

I was unable to find any details about Senior Class night, which occurred the night before commencement. I can only guess that it was a party atmosphere to celebrate their last night together as classmates.

Although I did not match the prompt photo, this is my contribution to Sepia Saturday. Please play along and visit other bloggers who participate: Sepia Saturday.

Abbie and Eveline

Tag Archives: Eveline Coates

Eveline’s Senior Year: Junior-Senior Reception, Part 1

Eveline’s Senior Year: Grandma Was in a Play After All

Eveline’s Senior Year: Senior Class Play