Saturday at the museum was not as busy as usual and after Kevin and I had talked over some coming programs, it was time to get some work done. I tackled a box of memorabilia from the Class of 1949. It had been sitting there for quite a while.

The first thing I pulled out were beautifully done booklets for every five years they had a reunion. They were wonderful and put together in cookbook style. I thought right away that someone had gone to a lot of work. We do have a drawer for reunion material.

Next I pulled out two scrapbooks of the class and they were remarkable. They had pictures when they were little kids that were most interesting. I sat there and enjoyed them. I finally turned to Kevin and said, “When the Class of 1950 had class reunions, many of them were at my house in Eagle Point and I was busy fixing food.” When I was not doing food I was busy fixing beautiful tables. We met at the museum a couple different times and I did the food there. One time I had Betty Ebert and her daughter Louise do the food at my house and they stood behind the table full of food with their chef outfits on. They looked very professional. The tables looked very remarkable.

I do have to apologize to the class of 1950 that my focus was on food and not on doing wonderful little booklets finished off in cookbook style. My booklets were simply stapled together. I think Evelyn Wales Bowman did the booklets and scrapbooks for the class of 1949. Sometime at the museum we need to have scrapbook night or day and bring out all the scrapbooks.

Mary Elizabeth Garrison, as a teacher, put together many scrapbooks of her classes. They are always interesting to look at and they told the story of all her students even as they grew up. We also have scrapbooks that have been put together by others that tell the story of their years in school in Polo.

Kevin also found this week, at the museum, negatives of the White Pines in the negative drawer. Some we do not have in picture form. Now we need to find someone who will process those into actual pictures. We already have an album of the White Pines when the Civilian Conservation Corps put the Pines together many years ago. They need to be part of our book when we get going on it. The White Pines State Park will celebrate 100 years in 2027.

Recently Bruce, Robin and I went to the Pines for a program on the CCC given by a teacher of Highland College. While there was not a lot of information on the CCC at the Pines, it was a good history lesson of the United States from World War I until the CCC was formed in the entire United States.

Elmer Stauffer will give us a program on just the White Pines State Park in just a few months so you will be hearing more information on all of this in the future.

Betty Obendorf is a historian for the Polo Historical Society.