Carrie Hardy in the 1922 Ypsilanti High School Yearbook

Ypsilanti High School math teacher Carrie Hardy, whose 1919 diary is being serialized on this blog, appears in the 1922 YHS yearbook in several photos and bits of text.

This photo in particular haunts me a bit. I find an abstracted and distant quality in her gaze, not without a touch of grim sadness or even anger.


(Click on any image for a larger view).



The front cover of the 1922 yearbook.










Here is the YHS in 1922 where Carrie taught--now Cross Street Village.

It's a bit hard to tell, but if you look on the extreme right side of the photo, it appears as though the school building ends under the clock tower. Today, of course, the building extends in equal measure on either side of the clock tower. Was there an eastern addition built some time after 1922? Dusty D does not know, but would be grateful to learn if someone else knows more about this.

Here is Carrie Hardy pictured in her math classroom, on one of the yearbook's "Faculty" pages.




In 1922, Carrie Hardy also advised the Student Council. You can see her at the bottom of this group photo.




Carrie is also mentioned in the "Senior Class Will." "To the class of 1923 we give, devise, and bequeath our most beloved session room [I *think* this was a sort of homeroom], with the understanding that this room be at all times treated with reverence and respect which is due to the last home of our noble class. The same silence and order which we have maintained at roll call is to be continued by our successors. Also with this toom goes all special privileges that belong exclusively to Seniors, such as the right to have private banquets, wear corduroy pants and brilliant dresses, and to establish the class banner in said room. The greatest privilege which the class has to present is that of having Miss Hardy for session room teacher and a guardian for the erring ones.

The last mention of Carrie in the yearbook is as the stage manager of the senior play "Green Stockings." "Miss Hardy selected the staff to assist in getting things ready, and due to her wise selections, the immense task of getting furniture, settings, costumes, properties, and effects to transform the barren stage into the proper scenes was very efficiently accomplished. Few realize what a job it is to advertise and sell tickets for such an undertaking as the Senior play, and great credit is due those who had part in the managerial and financial end of the production."

It's a bit sad to reflect that the last actor stepped off that stage 87 years ago, and that Miss Hardy, and likely all of her students, are dead now.

But Carrie continues to gaze out from that first portrait, little guessing in her day that almost nine decades later, a whole new "classroom" would be reading her diary and pondering her enigmatic gaze.