Made the Paper

Zemla Doke Griffith was evidently a dear friend to my grandmother, Rubie McClellan Davis. She sure didn’t want Rubie missing out on any of the fun. When it looked like the Fort Meade Junior Senior High School was going to hold a reunion in 1983—without Rubie—her friend Zemla made sure to share every moment with her.

In addition to a letter packed with details of latest class members’ news, Zemla included a copy of the bulletin from the evening event plus a newspaper clipping.

Undated and unsourced, the clipping included both a group photograph and a nice write-up. Since the article is of a good size, I’ll cover its contents in tomorrow’s post. In the meantime, I’ll share the photo below.

Unfortunately, the caption doesn’t label the participants, so I have no idea who each of these people might be—other than knowing that they make up part of the list of the student body members of 1912 I posted yesterday from the September 22, 1983, program.

I do have my guesses about which one might be Rubie’s friend, Zemla—seated in the front row, third from the left. Remember, I mentioned that this wasn’t the first reunion Rubie had hoped to attend. There was another program from a previous decade which Rubie had carefully tucked away among her special papers. That package—which we’ll get to, soon—did include a labeled photo. When we get to that point, I’ll refer back to this picture and see if you think I guessed correctly. Your eyes are almost certainly guaranteed to be better than mine!

Class of ’12: Members of the student body of Fort Meade High School in 1912 joined the class of 1984 recently during special festivities at the South Polk County school. Fifteen members of the school’s 1912 student body attended the special reunion and another 15 sent regards, according to FMHS principal Tom McDonald.