In 1930 Greenville High School had nearly 300 students and was located in a three-story brick building north
of Beaumont Avenue and Wyatt St.
The 124-page yearbook, the Graduate, gives us a great deal of information about the GHS of 71 years ago.
Serving the nearly 300 students were 13 faculty members, plus the principal and the district
superintendent.
Of these 15, five held a degree from Greenville College and five had a degree from Millikin University
in Decatur.
Those with Greenville College degrees included Ira King, the principal who also taught mathematics;
Howard Zahniser, who taught English; Ellene Nelson, history, economics and psychology; Dorothy
Stoutzenberg, history and civics; and Robert W. Woods, music.
Those with degrees from Millikin included Alex Long, superintendent of schools; Helen C. Harris, English;
Grace Kessinger, French and English; Ernestine Beatty, mathematics; and Ethelyn Draser, biology and science.
The other faculty members (with degrees from other colleges) were Mary Ruth Lofftus, English; L. Glen
Baker, manual arts and athletics; Leah L. Johnson, home economics; Ione Brodbeck, Latin; and Ellsworth E.
Scott, chemistry and physics.
(All of the nine female faculty members were listed as "Miss".)
Members of the Board of Education were F. T. Rowland, president; H. S. Browne, secretary; S. B. Vaughan, H.
W. Riedemann, Dr. A. M. Keith, E. L. Bass and H. A.
McLain.
The 1930 Graduate yearbook lists class officers as follows, with the class president listed first, then
the vice president and the secretary-treasurer.
Senior Class -- Juanita File, Clare Wasmuth and Lillian McHenry.
Junior Class -- William Dawdy, Catherine Pepin and Eugene Hoiles.
Sophomore Class -- Willard Rowland, Carl Krebs and Simeon
Harnetiaux.
Freshman Class -- Paul Blizzard, Howard Canon and Margaret Vaughan.
Editor of the GHS Times newspaper was Carolyn McLain. Editor of the Graduate yearbook was Gerald Powell.
Other student activities included the Student Council, the Debate Club, the Girls Glee Club, the Boys Glee
Club, the Yell Club (cheerleaders), the Junior Bulletin Board Committee, the library assistants and
the Senior Assembly Committee, which planned assembly programs.
The band was directed by Edward Quivron.
The GHS "yell leaders" were Carolyn McLain, Eric Smith and Kathryn Andrews. One of the more concise yells
went like this:
"Yea! Blue, Yea! White,
Yea, Greenville! Fight!"
Athletics included tennis, basketball and football.
Basketball coach was L. G. Baker. Captain of the team was Earl Wilson. Key basketball players were Gerald
Powell, Vernon Greiman, Leo Watson, Richard Travis, Earl Nelson, Willard Rowland, Lorraine Morton, Eugene
Hoiles and Simeon Harnetiaux.
The GHS football team had a bad year, which was to be its last for many years to come. In the 1929 season
the football team lost all six games (against Hillsboro, Centralia, Effingham, Sparta, Carlyle and
Salem.) GHS had a grand total of just 14 points, compared to 219 points for the opponents.
GHS had a football team for just four years starting in 1926. A football team wasn't fielded again until a
new community unit high school building was opened in 1956. (The old building on Beaumont was torn down in
1966.)
Girls sports in 1930 centered around the Girls Athletic
Association. The president was Alice Malan. There were about 60 members who
participated in volleyball, soccer, basketball, baseball and tennis.
Among the events of the school year was Fall Play Day
at Granite City, where nine other schools participated.
During the 1929-30 school year GHS students produced a three-act play, a comedy titled "Her Step-Husband."
The coach was Superintendent Alex Long.
Social events of the year included the Junior-Senior Banquet and the Times-Graduate Party.
The yearbook included many original literary contributions by students.
These included poetry, brief stories (some of them humorous), as well as some jokes and the senior class
prophecy. There also were a few humorous cartoons portraying students and faculty members.
Eugene Hoiles wrote about a trip he made in the summer of 1929 to Paris and to the Castle of Chillon near
Geneva, Switzerland, prior to his attending the International Boy Scouts Jamboree in England.
Incidentally, it was quite common many years ago for students to drop out of high school and enter the
world of work. The 1930 yearbook noted that there were about 66 graduating seniors. But the same class had
131 graduates from eighth grade in 1926.
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