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Another task was to attach a Senior photo to as many names as possible. At last count, there are 2,014 on the list (including 399 who are deceased). I've found yearbook pictures for 1,901 of them. Fortunately I'm retired, because wrangling all those photos was a major effort! It took most of the winter of 2021-22. Megafaces The photo project first required locating the images in our various Hi-O-Hi yearbooks and converting them into individual little Jpegs. On the occasion of our 50th reunions, this process had already been completed for most of 68 and 69. However, I still had to convert the 67 photos, including a person I've mentioned before, Fräulein Dew. The task led me to appreciate the efforts of the volunteer Hi-O-Hi staff, seen below. They needed to process the images of not one class, not two, not three, but four classes. Piles of glossy prints from the Stofan Studio had to be sorted and re-photographed through a halftone screen so they could be printed on the pages of the latest yearbook. I've discovered only two apparent misidentifications.
Decades later, when computers became available, the yearbooks were scanned and posted online. I needed to find Miss Dew's page and grab an image so I could add her picture to our website.
On the other hand, Sophomores and Freshmen are more enthusiastic about their new college experience and more likely to take the trouble to visit Stofan's. Therefore, I might have better luck in 1965 and 1964. These earlier photos have less resolution, and they show younger students more casually dressed and posed, but they're better than nothing. Thus I would work my way down the Most Likely column in the chart below.
Still no Roberta Dew? Maybe she earned her diploma in only three years, in which case previous yearbooks might have pictured her in a later class than I had assumed. Was she already among the Juniors in the 1965 book? Look for her using the Graduated Early column. On the other hand, maybe it took her five years to get her diploma, in which case some of the yearbooks might have included her in an earlier class than I had assumed. Was she already a first-year student in the 1963 book? Look for her using the Skipped a Year column. And if Roberta became Mrs. Conant while still a student, she might have been alphabetized under C instead of D! After spending a couple of months going through all these possibilities, my list of classmates without faces now totaled scarcely more than a hundred. I again compared that short list to those four classes in five different yearbooks, hoping to find a picture I missed of Roberta Dew (or Conant) or maybe Berta Dew (or Conant). I was obsessed by the hunt. Maybe I'd get lucky. The Processing In reality, I did locate Roberta as a Senior in the 1967 book. I downloaded an image of that page. Now what should I do with it?
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