OPOMAC displays history of Graham High School
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Graham High School yearbooks dating back to 1913 sit inside a display case at the Old Post Office Museum and Art Center for their September and October exhibit featuring the history of GHS. (Leader photo by Thomas Wallner) -
A Graham High School letter jacket from 1990 on loan to the Old Post Office Museum and Art Center for their exhibit showing off the history of GHS. The exhibit will be at the center from September through October. The OPOMAC requested items from the community for the exhibit to combine with their archive items. (Leader photo by Thomas Wallner)
From September through October, an exhibit will be hosted at the Old Post Office Museum and Art Center showcasing Graham High School’s history through objects, clothes and more.
OPOMAC Director Lynsey Browning said the idea to host the event came from one of the organization’s board members, who thought it would draw a crowd with how big homecoming and football are in Graham. The OPOMAC already had a number of older GHS items in their archive, but Browning reached out to the community to obtain more items for the show.
“I reached out on Facebook and then I reached out to our members asking them what they had,” Browning said. “I have received letter jackets and a lot of graduations announcements, yearbooks, souvenir programs from football games, decorations and Graham High School memorabilia. The community has been really helpful and it goes great with what we have in our archives as well because all of our archives are donated since we have been opened.”
Browning said she was surprised by the amount of items the community let the OPOMAC borrow for the exhibit, especially the yearbooks which date back to 1913.
“We have the 1913, 1916 and 1917 (yearbook),” she said. “The 1913 one was the first professionally published yearbook that they had, but Dorman (Holub) said there was one in 1908 that is the first time that they published one. It was just published by the high school.”
Browning was working on the exhibit with GHS and local historian Dorman Holub to obtain the historical information for each piece on display. She said it is an experience to be able to display the number of pieces for the event from their archive.
“We have a lot of GHS pieces in our archives, and we wanted to be able to show those pieces,” Browning said. “The Graham Community Foundation actually donated us the funds to get these new display cases which are out here. We needed those to be able to put these things out so people don’t touch all of our cool items, so that was another big reason we were able to do this.”
On display are GHS annuals and programs from 1926-1990, a 1956 collection of the GHS Stampede papers, yearbooks, scrapbooks, letter jackets, uniforms, historic photos such as the 1921 Graham Public School class photo and more.
For the rest of the story, see the Wednesday, Sept. 18 edition of The Graham Leader.
