By Tracy Gupton

I have really enjoyed thumbing through the yellowed pages of the scrapbook put together by Mogene Clayton 100 years ago. My fellow Columbia Heritage Foundation board member Karen Rowold Mostyn was kind enough to loan me her grandmother’s book of memories from Mogene’s senior year at West Columbia High School.

Mogene Clayton Hanson passed away on the first day of November in 1978 at the age of 70. Her high school memory book was left with Karen’s mother, Polly Hanson Rowold, and is presently a prized possession of both Polly and Karen. I now possess my mother’s 1942 Gusher yearbook which I was told was the first actual yearbook West Columbia High School produced. That was my Mom’s junior year in high school and the senior year for my Dad’s brother, S.D. Gupton, and his wife, my Aunt Nina Gotcher Gupton. The number of young men and women graduating from West Columbia High School in 1925 was a lot fewer than in 1942.

An invitation to her high school graduation was pasted to one of the inner pages of Mogene’s scrapbook. It read: “West Columbia High School Class of nineteen hundred twenty-five Commencement Exercises Monday, May eighteenth, 8:00 P.M. High School Auditorium.”

Baccalaureate was held the night before graduation ceremonies, Sunday, May 17, 1925, at 8 p.m. with Miss Ruth Pierce providing both the processional to begin Baccalaureate and the recessional to close the night’s ceremony. Reverend J.L. Ross delivered the scripture reading and prayer, Dr. James Drummond the sermon and Reverend L.W. White the benediction. Mrs. Gordon Clark sang, “Lead Thou Me On,” and Mr. and Mrs. Kenser sang “Hark! Hark! My Soul!” at the Baccalaureate event. The Reverend Dr. Drummond passed away two years later and was laid to rest at historic Columbia Cemetery in West Columbia in 1927.

Columbia Cemetery is also the final resting place of Mogene and her husband, Birch Reynolds Hanson, who died in 1993. He was born in 1904 and was four years older than his wife. Mogene Clayton was born June 8, 1908, and graduated with the West Columbia High School Class of 1925 with Jack Phillips, Bernice Hardcastle, Robert Farmer, my cousin James Gupton, Vernon Kay, Parker Presley, Oscar Clifford, H.O. McElveen, Jasper Harness, M.A. “Mack” McLeod, Burris Lowry, Luther Gratehouse, Clarence Hopkins, Bernice Augsberger, Floyd Meador, Angie Arrington, A.W. Ellis, Francis Davis, Johnnye Moore, Melvia Lindsey, Madie McElveen Barrow, Dorothy Brewer, Donald Miller, Mary Jeanette Smith and Lydia Engberg.

Lydia delivered the salutatory address at the May 18, 1925, graduating exercises; Mogene Clayton spoke on the topic, “America, The Refuge of the Downtrodden;” and the valedictory speech was given by the Class of 1925’s top graduate, Mary Jeannette Smith. Stuffed inside Mogene’s senior year scrapbook was a newspaper obituary for her graduating class’s valedictorian. Born July 20, 1908, in Houston, Mary Jeannette Smith passed away on May 25, 2003, 25 years after Mogene. Mary is also buried at historic Columbia Cemetery.

The senior year scrapbook that has been taken such great care of over the past 100 years has this written by Mogene on one of the first few pages of the book: “A little stroll in the garden of memory, where bloom the flowers of experience, bitter and sweet, where the saddest words are not ‘Goodbye’ but ‘Do you remember.’”

She also wrote that the graduating Class of 1925’s motto was “All for one, one for all;” the class colors were pink and green; and the class flower was the pink rose. Beneath the photo below of the front of West Columbia High School in the mid 1920s, Mogene wrote: “I shall always remember this spot where I spent my happiest and most miserable hours. In a certain upstairs study hall and a certain seat in the auditorium, I’ve left my mark. May it rest in peace. R.I.P.”

Former high school teacher and coach James Creighton wrote about West Columbia High School in his 1969 book, “The Magic Years: West Columbia High School 1927-1936,”This building cost $65,000 and provided for a modern brick structure with fourteen large rooms and an auditorium of 40 x 80 feet. It was the direct result of the efforts of Superintendent Killibrew, who personally gathered the signatures necessary for the calling of an election which made the building possible.

“It was this building which I first saw in 1927,” Creighton wrote about him arriving as a new school teacher in West Columbia two years after Mogene Clayton Hanson graduated. “It was this building with all of its magnificent library which burned in 1943; and it is to this building and to those that dwelt therein that the narrative of The Magic Years invites you.”

Mogene wrote in her scrapbook that the senior class officers in 1924-25 were Bernice Lucille Hardcastle, president; Mary Jeannette Smith, secretary; and Vernon Kay, vice president. Among the faculty teaching in West Columbia during the 1924-25 school year were: Miss Mason, math; Miss Stroud, English; Mrs. Herndon, Home Economics; Miss Hawkins, Business; Mr. Dunn, History; Mr. Herndon, Spanish; Miss Crosby, Expression; and Mr. Mohle, Science, according to what is written under “The Faculty” on one page in Mogene’s scrapbook. She also wrote that she was in Dramatic Club in high school with Vernon Kay, Bill Brewer, Bernice Hardcastle, John Renfro, Buelah Mae Ferguson and Janine Moore.

Athletics at West Columbia High School during the 1924-25 school year included football season lasting from September 15th through November 25th, basketball being played from December 10th through February 15th, track season lasting from February 23rd to April 1st, and baseball being played from March 25th into the month of May when the school year ended. Her scrapbook includes a picture of former West Columbia Mayor George Lincecum throwing the discus at a track meet. Mogene wrote in her scrapbook that the Roughnecks boys basketball team won the county championship her senior year, “but was disqualified on account of Mac. He was ineligible. However, it was a great and glorious season.

Of the Roughnecks’ county championship season in the fall of 1924, Mogene Clayton wrote in her senior year scrapbook: “Of all the bad luck we had our boys fumbled the ball five feet from a touchdown and the opposite side gained the (cussed) old ball and (flew da coop). We hastily recovered our prized possession and started out again. But the score at the end was 3-0 in favor of Freeport.” That football game between Brazoria County rivals was played November 11, 1924. Kickoff was at 3 p.m. in an era before stadium lights were added.

Mogene took on the role of Aunt Minerva Boulder, housekeeper of Professor Peterkin Pepp, in the senior play, “Professor Pepp,” performed at West Columbia High School May 15, 1925, during the final week of the school year. Vernon Kay had the starring role as Professor Pepp, Parker Presley was the professor’s son, Howard Green (who had the court change his name), Robert Farmer was Sim Batty, a college town police officer, Jack Phillips was Pink Hatcher, an athletic sophomore, and Mary Jeannette Smith was Petunia Muggins, the hired girl.

Over the past 100 years, some of the writing has faded on the yellowed pages of Mogene’s scrapbook and a few of the pictures have blurred. Of course, none of the students or teachers are still around, a century removed from the graduating Class of 1925 having walked the hallowed halls of the old high school that once stood on the grounds where Republic Plaza is now located. My graduating Class of 1975 is celebrating 50 years out of Columbia High School in 2025. And we graduated from CHS 50 years after the Class of 1925.

Asa Wesley Griggs, who was the superintendent of schools in West Columbia in 1925, passed away in 1938. He and his wife are both buried at Columbia Cemetery. Dorothy Brewer Dunn, a 1925 grad who passed away in 1956, is also interred at Columbia Cemetery. As is another 1925 grad, Robert Ruffin Farmer Jr., who died in 1990. Burris Howard Lowry died in Houston in 1983 and is buried at Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery in Houston. Luther “Luke” Gratehouse died at 62 in 1969 and is buried in Beeville, Texas. Thanks to Karen Mostyn for sharing her grandmother’s scrapbook with me, those reading this post can get an idea what things were like in West Columbia 100 years ago.