Yearbooks

It's Homecoming time of year! Here's a glimpse back to Homecoming in tiny Geddes, South Dakota, in 1962.

Homecoming 1962

This snapshot is in color, but similar-looking black-and-white versions were surely published in every high school yearbook in the U.S. that year.

Over the years we've found, inherited, and rescued a number of high-school and college yearbooks. Although many of these annual publications are available online now, certainly not every year from every school is represented.

Old yearbooks in good condition (and with limited writing/defacing) do have continued use. Both Ancestry.com and Classmates.com accept submissions, though they have different guidelines. Among the differences is that (as of this writing) Ancestry does not return yearbooks, and Classmates has an application process to see if the book is from a year and location they don't already have.

So if you have an old yearbook that no longer sparks pleasant memories--or one that never did--consider making it digitally available for others. And if you have my 10th-grade yearbook, which a friend lost in 1989, please let me know.