Introduction: The Yearbook That Became an Archive
Most yearbooks survive because nobody bothered to throw them away. Very rarely, a yearbook survives with enough accompanying material to become something larger than itself. Such is the case with this 1938 copy of The Alciphronian, the yearbook of Atlanta Boys' High School.
At first glance the volume appears familiar. The cover is attractive, the typography reflects the streamlined design sensibilities of the late 1930s, and the contents contain the expected mixture of student portraits, faculty pages, literary contributions, athletic coverage, advertisements, and autograph pages. Yet the longer one spends with the book, the less it resembles an ordinary school annual and the more it resembles a documentary archive.
The transformation begins with ownership. The yearbook belonged to Edwin Kenny, a member of the Boys' High School Class of 1938. Had only the book survived, Kenny would be little more than another name in a graduating class. Instead, the yearbook remained accompanied by a report card, a religious certificate, Decca record inserts dated May and June 1938, a Chas. N. Walker Roofing advertising flyer, and numerous signatures. Together these materials provide a degree of provenance that most yearbooks never acquire.
Kenny's later military career adds another dimension to the archive. Like many members of the Class of 1938, his adult life was shaped by national events that could not yet be anticipated at graduation. The survival of his papers, certificates, and associated ephemera demonstrates an instinct for preservation that ultimately benefited historians and collectors alike.
Collectors often use the word provenance loosely. In many cases it consists of little more than a handwritten inscription or a family tradition. Here, however, provenance becomes part of the story itself. The report card establishes Kenny as a student. The certificate provides another glimpse into his life outside the classroom. The record catalogs reveal something about the popular culture that surrounded him. The signatures document his social world. Later information show that he would serve in the United States Army and ultimately retire as a colonel.
Individually, none of these items would be extraordinary. Collectively, they create a coherent archive. The distinction is important because archives allow us to move beyond objects and into lives. A yearbook records a moment. An archive records relationships, institutions, ambitions, and memory. Through Kenny's surviving materials we gain access not only to a graduating class but to an entire ecosystem of people and institutions that shaped Atlanta in the late 1930s.
That ecosystem becomes apparent almost immediately. The advertisements alone read like a directory of prewar Atlanta. The Fox Theatre appears in its prime. The Atlanta Biltmore promotes itself as one of the city's outstanding business institutions. The Hotel Ansley and Henry Grady Hotel reflect the hospitality industry of a growing southern city. Randall Brothers, still familiar to Atlantans today, appears as evidence of commercial continuity stretching across generations. George Moore Ice Cream preserves the memory of a local brand that once occupied a recognizable place in everyday life. The businesses are significant not simply because they advertised, but because they advertised here, within a publication associated with one of Atlanta's most respected educational institutions.
The Biltmore's appearance also reflects Atlanta's emergence as the commercial capital of much of the Southeast. Long before the city became known for convention business, major hotels functioned as centers of commerce, politics, and social life. Traveling executives, salesmen, lecturers, and entertainers often experienced Atlanta through establishments such as the Biltmore and Ansley, making these hotels important ambassadors for the city.
Their presences demonstrate that Boys' High School occupied a respected position within the civic life of Atlanta. One advertisement from the Atlanta Biltmore congratulates Boys' High as "one of Atlanta's outstanding educational assets." The phrase is revealing. It suggests that the school was viewed not merely as a public institution but as a producer of future leaders whose success mattered to the city as a whole. The literary section points in the same direction.
One page pairs Anderson M. Scruggs, Class of 1915, with senior Alex W. Bealer Jr. Scruggs appears through a poem reprinted from his published collection Glory to Earth. Bealer appears as a student contributor decades before becoming one of America's most influential writers on blacksmithing, woodworking, and traditional craftsmanship. The juxtaposition is remarkable. On a single spread the editors connected a published alumnus with a future author whose work would influence generations of collectors, craftsmen, and historians.
Elsewhere the volume preserves the names of future physicians, military officers, civic leaders, businessmen, and public servants. Research into signatures and class rosters reveals lives that extended far beyond the walls of Boys' High School. Reading the yearbook today produces an unusual effect. The students pictured within its pages do not yet know what their futures hold. The reader does. The yearbook's date amplifies this tension.
Published in 1938, the volume occupies a narrow window between two eras. The Great Depression was still a present memory. The Second World War had not yet transformed the lives of American students. The young men who filled the classrooms of Boys' High stood unknowingly at the edge of an historical divide. Within only a few years many would be serving in uniform. Some would travel farther from Atlanta than they could possibly have imagined in 1938. Others would return home to help shape the city's postwar growth.
This temporal position gives the Alciphronian unusual power as a historical document. It captures Atlanta before Atlanta became modern Atlanta. The skyline was different. The business community was smaller. The city's cultural institutions were still emerging into their mature forms. Yet many of the foundations of modern Atlanta were already present. The schools, hotels, businesses, printers, and civic organizations represented in the yearbook formed part of a network that would help drive the city's later development.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the archive is that its central figure remains elusive.
Despite owning the volume, Edwin Kenny appears difficult to locate among the senior portraits. Whether he missed the photography session or was omitted through editorial oversight remains unknown. The irony is striking. The person most responsible for preserving the archive is among the least visible individuals within it. Yet his absence only strengthens his role within the story.
Kenny becomes the unseen narrator of the archive. His report card, certificate, catalogs, and papers allow us to reconstruct a world that would otherwise have disappeared. Through his preservation, a routine school annual becomes something far richer: a window into prewar Atlanta and the people who would carry that city into the modern era.
Boys' High School and the Atlanta Leadership Class
To understand why the 1938 Alciphronian matters, one must first understand what Boys' High School represented within Atlanta society.
Modern readers often view yearbooks primarily as records of student life. In the case of Boys' High, the yearbook also served as a public statement about the institution itself. The volume repeatedly presents the school as a place of achievement, tradition, leadership, and preparation. The advertisements, faculty pages, literary contributions, athletic coverage, and student organizations all point toward the same conclusion: Boys' High saw itself not merely as a school but as a training ground for future leaders. The city's business community appears to have agreed.
That distinction is important. By 1938, Boys' High had established a reputation that extended beyond the classroom. It was viewed as an institution contributing directly to the future of the city. The implication is clear: today's students would become tomorrow's professionals, businessmen, civic leaders, military officers, and public servants. The yearbook provides considerable evidence that this expectation was justified.
At the center of the institution stood Principal Herbert Orlando Smith. To generations of students, faculty, and alumni, H. O. Smith became synonymous with Boys' High School itself. Educated at Harvard, Smith brought intellectual credibility and administrative stability to the school during an era that included both the Great Depression and the approach of global war. Many principals oversee schools, but only a handful become institutional symbols.
Smith's influence extended far beyond routine administration. A Harvard-educated educator serving during a period that spanned economic hardship and approaching war, he helped reinforce Boys' High's reputation as one of Atlanta's premier public schools. Alumni recollections repeatedly describe him as a stabilizing presence whose expectations regarding scholarship, conduct, and preparation for college helped define the school's identity.
Smith appears to have been one of those rare figures whose influence extended beyond administrative duties. Alumni remembered him not simply as a manager but as an educator who shaped the character of the institution. His long tenure provided continuity at a time when economic and social conditions across the nation remained uncertain. The confidence visible throughout the Alciphronian reflects that leadership. The yearbook is ambitious. Its design is thoughtful. Its literary section reaches beyond student poetry. Its advertising section attracted prominent Atlanta businesses. Its athletic coverage conveys pride without slipping into mere boosterism.
Taken together, these elements suggest a school that possessed a strong sense of identity. Athletics formed another important component of that identity.
Few names in Georgia high-school sports carried more weight than R. L. "Shorty" Doyal.
Doyal's importance should be measured not merely by wins and losses but by his place in Georgia scholastic athletics. During an era when high-school football occupied an increasingly important place in community life, successful coaches often became civic figures. A surviving autograph from Doyal therefore represents more than a signature; it preserves a connection to one of the personalities who helped shape the public reputation of Boys' High.
To modern readers unfamiliar with Georgia football history, it may be difficult to appreciate the significance of Doyal's presence within the volume. During his coaching career he became one of the state's most respected athletic figures, building championship-caliber programs and helping establish Boys' High as a major force in scholastic athletics. The surviving autograph page containing Doyal's signature therefore carries meaning beyond the autograph itself. It represents a direct connection between student and mentor.
Yearbooks are filled with signatures, but not all signatures are equal. Some merely record acquaintance. Others document relationships. A coach like Doyal occupied a unique position in the lives of students. He represented discipline, teamwork, competition, and achievement. His autograph survives as evidence of the personal bonds that connected students to the institution. The same page also preserves signatures from faculty members and classmates, illustrating another aspect of Boys' High culture. The school was not simply producing graduates. It was producing networks.
That distinction becomes increasingly important as one researches the later lives of the students represented in the volume.
Many yearbooks become historical dead ends because the names within them vanish into obscurity. The 1938 Alciphronian repeatedly produces the opposite result. Name after name leads to later accomplishment.
Albert Amis Rayle Jr., senior class president and recipient of the Atlanta Journal Cup, became a physician whose career reflected both academic achievement and public service.
Sidney Isenberg likewise entered medicine and became known within Atlanta's professional community. Josiah Victor Benator served his country during World War II before becoming one of Atlanta's most admired scouting leaders. Theodore Peter O'Callaghan Sr. moved from Boys' High to military aviation, flying B-17 bombers during the war before entering public service and municipal leadership. C. Trippe Slade followed a similar path of education, military service, and professional accomplishment. Other names continue to emerge as research progresses.
James Merritt Ethridge entered publishing and biographical research. Byron Sol Cohen became associated with Atlanta's hospitality and entertainment industries. Alex W. Bealer Jr. evolved from student poet into one of America's foremost interpreters of traditional craftsmanship and material culture.
What makes these biographies especially compelling is that none of them were known to the students reading the yearbook in 1938. The accomplishments lay in the future. The reader of the Alciphronian sees only potential. The modern historian sees outcomes. That tension creates much of the yearbook's historical power.
One cannot help but look at the student portraits differently once the later biographies become known. The faces cease to be anonymous. They become physicians, military officers, authors, businessmen, civic leaders, and educators in embryonic form. The yearbook captures them at the precise moment before those futures became reality. The school itself seems aware of this dynamic.
Throughout the volume there is an emphasis on preparation, responsibility, leadership, and achievement. Students were expected to contribute not merely to their own success but to the success of the city around them. This expectation helps explain why major Atlanta businesses chose to advertise within the publication.
The Atlanta Biltmore, Randall Brothers, the Fox Theatre, the Henry Grady Hotel, the Hotel Ansley, and the Cox-Carlton. These institutions were not purchasing advertising space solely because parents might become customers. They were also associating themselves with a respected educational institution whose graduates would soon enter Atlanta's professional and commercial life. In that sense, the Alciphronian functioned as more than a yearbook. It served as a meeting point between education, business, culture, and civic identity. The students represented future Atlanta, while the advertisers represented present Atlanta; the volume brought the two together.
Viewed from that perspective, the 1938 Alciphronian becomes something larger than a school publication. It becomes a record of how a city understood itself. Boys' High School stood at the center of a network linking educators, students, businesses, cultural institutions, and civic leaders. The yearbook preserves that network at a moment when both the school and the city stood on the threshold of profound change.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the 1938 Alciphronian is that it preserves not only a school but a city.
Historians often rely upon newspapers, city directories, census schedules, and official records to reconstruct urban life. Yearbooks rarely receive the same attention. Yet the advertising section of the Alciphronian functions as a surprisingly effective guide to Atlanta during the late 1930s. Through its pages we encounter the institutions, businesses, landmarks, and commercial aspirations of a city on the verge of transformation.
Modern Atlanta is frequently defined by its airport, interstate highways, corporate headquarters, and skyline. The Atlanta preserved within the yearbook is different. It is smaller, more intimate, and still strongly centered around downtown. Hotels occupied a particularly important place within that landscape because they served not merely as lodging but as centers of business, politics, dining, entertainment, and civic life. The prominence of hotel advertising within the Alciphronian reflects this reality. The Atlanta Biltmore, Hotel Ansley, Henry Grady Hotel, and Cox-Carlton Hotel all appear within the volume. Their advertisements are not accidental. They reveal the institutions that defined Atlanta's public life and projected its image to visitors. Among these establishments, the Atlanta Biltmore occupies a special place.
When the Biltmore opened in 1924, it immediately became one of the city's most prestigious addresses. Designed in a grand architectural style intended to communicate elegance and modernity, the hotel hosted businessmen, politicians, entertainers, and travelers from across the country. For many visitors, the Biltmore represented Atlanta itself. Its appearance within the Alciphronian is therefore significant.
Sharing the page with the Biltmore is another revealing advertiser: Randall Brothers.
Unlike many businesses that appear in historical documents and then vanish, Randall Brothers remains familiar to Atlantans today. Founded in the nineteenth century, the company became one of the city's enduring commercial institutions. Its appearance beside the Biltmore creates an unexpected historical bridge between Atlanta's past and present. The juxtaposition is striking. One advertisement represents hospitality and prestige. The other represents construction, commerce, and continuity. Together they embody two different but complementary aspects of Atlanta's development. The significance of these advertisements extends beyond the individual businesses themselves. They reveal how commercial institutions sought association with educational institutions. In doing so, they illustrate a broader civic culture in which business, education, and public life were closely interconnected. The Hotel Ansley provides another example of this phenomenon.
Opened in the early twentieth century, the Ansley quickly became one of Atlanta's most important social and commercial centers. Its famous Rathskeller restaurant achieved regional renown, and the hotel became a gathering place for business leaders, politicians, travelers, and residents.
To modern readers accustomed to conference centers and suburban hotels, it may be difficult to appreciate the central role such establishments played in urban life. Hotels were where deals were negotiated. Organizations met. Political campaigns organized. Civic leaders gathered. Visitors formed their impressions of the city. The appearance of the Ansley within the Alciphronian therefore connects the yearbook directly to the social geography of Atlanta. The Henry Grady Hotel served a similar function.
Named after the influential journalist and promoter of the "New South," the hotel embodied Atlanta's ambitions. By 1938 the city increasingly viewed itself as a commercial and cultural center for the region. Hotels such as the Grady projected that image to visitors arriving by rail or automobile.
Likewise, the Cox-Carlton Hotel contributed to Atlanta's hospitality infrastructure and reflects the competitive environment among major hotels during the period. Each establishment sought to attract travelers, conventions, and business activity. Collectively they reveal a city actively promoting itself. The Fox Theatre introduces yet another dimension.
Unlike the hotels, the Fox represented entertainment rather than hospitality. Opened in 1929, it quickly became one of Atlanta's architectural and cultural landmarks. Even today it remains among the most recognizable buildings in the city.
Its appearance within the Alciphronian reminds us that entertainment formed an important part of urban life. Students attended movies. Families visited performances. Tourists experienced Atlanta through venues such as the Fox. The theater therefore occupies a place within the yearbook not merely as an advertiser but as a symbol of the city's cultural aspirations. The Fox also reveals something about timing. The yearbook appeared during the golden age of movie palaces. Motion pictures dominated popular entertainment, and theaters represented some of the most lavish public spaces many people encountered. The Fox advertisement therefore anchors the volume within a specific moment in American cultural history.
Not every advertiser within the yearbook possessed the grandeur of a major hotel or theater. In many ways the smaller businesses are equally revealing.
George Moore Ice Cream Company, for example, provides a glimpse into the commercial rhythms of everyday life. Such advertisements remind us that cities are not built solely by prominent institutions. They are also sustained by countless businesses serving ordinary needs. These smaller advertisements enrich the historical record because they preserve names and brands that might otherwise disappear from memory. The Chas. N. Walker Roofing flyer found within Edwin Kenny's archive offers a particularly compelling example.
Unlike the printed advertisements bound into the yearbook, the roofing flyer survives as a separate piece of ephemera. It was never intended to last nearly ninety years. Most such items were discarded shortly after receipt. Its survival therefore carries a significance disproportionate to its original purpose. The flyer documents a local business. It preserves period typography. It captures advertising styles of the era. Most importantly, it survived in context.
Because it remained with Kenny's yearbook, it becomes part of a larger story rather than an isolated fragment. This concept of context is central to understanding the archive as a whole. The advertisements do not matter simply because they exist. They matter because they coexist. Together they create a portrait of Atlanta's commercial ecosystem. Hotels, theaters, printers, retailers, contractors, restaurants, manufacturers, and educational institutions.
Each played a role within the city, and the Alciphronian preserves their intersection. The yearbook therefore functions almost as a time capsule.
Open its pages and one encounters not merely students but the city that surrounded them. One sees where visitors stayed, where residents attended performances, where businesses advertised, and how institutions presented themselves to the public. This is why the advertising section deserves to be treated as historical evidence rather than decorative filler. Many readers skip advertisements. Historians increasingly recognize their value.
Advertisements reveal aspirations, identities, priorities, and relationships. They show how institutions wished to be perceived and what audiences they sought to reach. Within the Alciphronian, they also reveal how Atlanta's business community viewed Boys' High School. The message emerges repeatedly and consistently. The school, its students, and its future all mattered. And in 1938, Atlanta's leading businesses were willing to say so publicly.
Viewed from this perspective, the commercial content of the yearbook becomes inseparable from its educational content. The city and the school appear not as separate entities but as parts of the same civic ecosystem. The advertisers represent present-day Atlanta. The students represent Atlanta's future. The Alciphronian brings the two together in a single volume, preserving a remarkable portrait of the city at a pivotal moment in its history.
A Generation on the Eve of War
One of the advantages of historical distance is that it allows us to see outcomes invisible to the people living through events. The students who opened the 1938 Alciphronian saw classmates, teachers, athletic victories, clubs, signatures, and plans for the future. They could not know that within only a few years the world around them would be transformed by global conflict. Nor could they know how dramatically the experiences of war, education, professional life, and civic service would shape the members of their graduating class.
The reader approaching the yearbook today possesses a different perspective. The photographs and signatures no longer represent unknown futures. In many cases they represent lives that can be reconstructed through military records, newspaper accounts, professional directories, obituaries, civic histories, and institutional archives. The result is a remarkable opportunity to observe a leadership class in formation. This may be one of the most important historical contributions of the Alciphronian. The volume captures accomplishment before accomplishment became visible. Albert Amis Rayle Jr. provides an excellent example.
Within the yearbook he appears as senior class president and recipient of the Atlanta Journal Cup, distinctions that already suggest unusual promise. Yet even those honors reveal only a portion of the story. Rayle would continue his education, attend Columbia University, graduate from Emory University School of Medicine, serve in the United States Navy, and establish a distinguished medical career. The progression feels natural when viewed retrospectively. One can easily imagine the successful physician emerging from the accomplished student. Yet the yearbook preserves the moment before that transformation occurred. It records potential rather than achievement. The same pattern appears repeatedly.
Sidney Isenberg would likewise enter medicine and become known for professional accomplishment and civic generosity. His later life reflects values that Boys' High sought to cultivate: education, service, responsibility, and contribution to the broader community.
Medicine appears with surprising frequency among the identified students, suggesting that the school functioned as an important pathway into professional life. Atlanta's hospitals, universities, and medical institutions benefited from a generation of graduates whose educational foundations were established in schools such as Boys' High. Military service provides another recurring theme.
For the Class of 1938, the Second World War was not an abstract geopolitical event. It became a defining personal experience. Josiah Victor Benator exemplifies this transformation.
In the yearbook he appears as a student among many others. Later he served in Europe during World War II, earning the respect of those who knew him both in military and civilian life. Following the war he became deeply involved in scouting and youth development, influencing generations of young Atlantans. His biography illustrates an important pattern. The war did not merely interrupt lives. It shaped them.
Experiences acquired during military service often influenced later careers, civic involvement, and leadership roles. The same qualities that schools sought to encourage—discipline, responsibility, teamwork, perseverance—became essential during wartime service. Theodore Peter O'Callaghan Sr. offers another compelling example.
Few students in the 1938 Alciphronian could have imagined the scale of events that lay ahead. Yet O'Callaghan would eventually fly B-17 bombers during the war before returning to build a career in business and public service. His later involvement in municipal government demonstrates the connection between military service and civic leadership that characterized so many members of his generation. The trajectory is striking. student, serviceman, and community leader. It is a sequence repeated throughout twentieth-century American history, and the yearbook captures its participants at the beginning of that journey. C. Trippe Slade followed a similar path.
His later service in North Africa and Italy placed him within some of the most significant campaigns of the European theater. Yet in 1938 he appears simply as another student preparing for graduation. The contrast between what the reader knows and what the student knew creates a powerful sense of historical perspective.
One of the great strengths of yearbooks is their inability to predict the future. They preserve individuals at a moment when all possibilities remain open. For historians, that uncertainty becomes part of the appeal. The yearbook does not know which students will become physicians, pilots, executives, educators, soldiers, or civic leaders. It presents them all equally. Historical research supplies the outcomes later.
James Merritt Ethridge demonstrates another avenue through which Boys' High graduates contributed to American life.
Rather than medicine or military service, Ethridge achieved prominence through publishing and biographical research. His later association with reference publishing organizations illustrates the broad range of careers pursued by members of the class. Not every form of influence appears in headlines.
Publishing shapes how information is organized, preserved, and disseminated. In that sense Ethridge contributed to the preservation of knowledge itself.
Byron Sol Cohen followed a different path, becoming associated with Atlanta's hospitality and entertainment industries. His career reflects another dimension of the city's growth during the postwar period. Atlanta's emergence as a regional center required not only physicians and public officials but also entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, and business leaders capable of serving an expanding population.
The diversity of these careers is significant. The students represented in the Alciphronian did not follow a single model of success. Some entered medicine, others military service, publishing, business, or public service. Collectively they illustrate the varied ways in which a generation contributed to the development of its city and nation. This diversity also helps explain why the Atlanta Biltmore's description of Boys' High as an "outstanding educational asset" was more than promotional language. The school's value lay not merely in producing graduates but in producing capable graduates. The distinction matters.
Educational institutions contribute to society not simply through enrollment numbers but through the lives of their alumni. The evidence preserved within the Alciphronian suggests that Boys' High consistently generated individuals prepared for leadership, service, and professional accomplishment. Even the students whose later biographies remain unidentified contribute to this narrative. Their signatures preserve a social network. Their photographs preserve faces.
Their presence reminds us that history is not composed solely of famous individuals. Every physician, pilot, executive, author, or public servant once existed within a community of classmates and friends. The yearbook preserves that community. Viewed collectively, the Class of 1938 becomes more than a roster. It becomes a generation. A generation shaped by the Great Depression. A generation entering adulthood at the threshold of global war.
A generation that would participate in the military, economic, civic, and cultural transformation of the United States during the mid-twentieth century. The Alciphronian captures them before those transformations occurred. That timing is what makes the volume so valuable. It allows us to see the future leaders of Atlanta and beyond at the precise moment when their futures remained unwritten. The students could not know where life would lead them. The reader can. Between those two perspectives lies the historical power of the yearbook. It is not merely a record of who these young men were. It is a record of who they were about to become.
Literary Atlanta: Anderson M. Scruggs, Alex W. Bealer, and the Cultural Ambitions of Boys' High
Among the many surprises contained within the 1938 Alciphronian, few are more revealing than the literary section.
At first glance the page appears unremarkable. Many yearbooks contain poetry, essays, and student contributions. Such material is often overlooked by readers eager to reach the class photographs, sports coverage, or autograph pages. Yet the literary section of the Alciphronian deserves closer attention because it reveals something important about the aspirations of both the editors and the institution they represented. The page in question pairs two figures separated by a generation. One was already a published poet, while the other had not yet begun the career that would make him nationally known. Together they provide a fascinating glimpse into Atlanta's literary and intellectual culture. The first contributor is Anderson M. Scruggs, Boys' High School Class of 1915.
His poem, Glory to Them, appears with a notation identifying it as reprinted from Glory of Earth, published by Oglethorpe University Press. That brief attribution tells us several things at once.
First, the editors clearly expected readers to recognize the significance of the contribution. This was not a student poem submitted for the annual. It was a work by an alumnus who had already achieved publication.
Second, the attribution demonstrates that Boys' High actively cultivated institutional memory. The editors were not simply documenting the Class of 1938. They were connecting that class to earlier generations of graduates.
Third, the reference to Oglethorpe University Press situates the yearbook within a broader intellectual and literary world. Atlanta's educational institutions did not exist in isolation. Schools, universities, publishers, and writers formed overlapping networks through which ideas circulated. Scruggs himself embodied that connection.
Although remembered primarily as a poet, he was also a professional man whose life bridged multiple worlds. Like many educated Atlantans of his generation, he moved comfortably between intellectual, professional, and civic spheres.
His appearance within the Alciphronian demonstrates that the school took pride in graduates whose achievements extended beyond business or public office. The choice of poem is equally revealing. The title alone—Glory to Them—suggests themes of remembrance, achievement, and gratitude.
Whether intentionally or not, the poem resonates with the broader purpose of a yearbook. Yearbooks exist to preserve memory. They acknowledge the contributions of individuals whose efforts might otherwise be forgotten. That connection becomes especially interesting when viewed from a modern perspective. The poem honored earlier generations. Today the yearbook itself serves a similar function. It preserves the memory of students, faculty, advertisers, and institutions that would otherwise recede into obscurity.
If Scruggs represents literary accomplishment already realized, Alex W. Bealer Jr. represents literary accomplishment still waiting to emerge.
His presence within the yearbook is one of the most remarkable discoveries associated with the volume.
In 1938 Bealer was simply another student contributor. His poem, The Death of Sitting Bull, appears opposite Scruggs's work. Nothing on the page announces the future significance of the author. No one reading the yearbook at the time could have known that Bealer would eventually become one of the most influential writers on traditional craftsmanship and material culture in the United States. Yet with the benefit of hindsight, the page acquires extraordinary significance.
Bealer's later career placed him in a unique position within American cultural history. Through books such as The Art of Blacksmithing, Old Ways of Working Wood, and The Tools That Built America, he became an interpreter of the physical objects that shaped everyday life. Long before museums, collectors, and historians fully embraced the study of material culture, Bealer recognized that tools, techniques, and handmade objects deserved serious attention. His work helped bridge the gap between craftsmanship and scholarship. Collectors appreciated him because he explained objects. Craftsmen appreciated him because he understood techniques. Historians appreciated him because he preserved knowledge that might otherwise have vanished.
For readers interested in antiques, decorative arts, tools, and traditional trades, Bealer occupies an important place in the intellectual landscape. Many of the objects that populate museums, collections, and antique shops today became more understandable because of his efforts. This context transforms the literary page into something far more interesting than a routine yearbook contribution.
On one side stands a published poet whose work had already entered print.
On the other stands a future author whose most important books remained decades away. The editors could not have known how meaningful that pairing would become. Yet the page now appears almost symbolic. It represents continuity. One generation passing intellectual and cultural traditions to the next. The significance extends beyond the individuals themselves. The page also tells us something about Boys' High School.
Educational institutions reveal their priorities through the material they choose to celebrate. A school focused exclusively on athletics would devote little attention to literature. A school interested only in academics might overlook creative expression. The Alciphronian demonstrates a broader vision. The editors devoted space to poetry. They highlighted alumni achievement. They encouraged student contributions.
In doing so, they presented Boys' High as an institution concerned with intellectual and cultural development as well as academic and athletic success. This ambition appears throughout the volume. The advertisements are thoughtfully integrated. The design is sophisticated. The literary section reaches beyond the school itself.
The result is a publication that feels more mature than many contemporary yearbooks. Part of that maturity reflects the era. The late 1930s occupied an interesting place in American cultural history. The nation was emerging from the Depression. Writers, artists, educators, and institutions increasingly viewed culture as an essential component of civic life. Literature mattered. Publishing mattered. Education mattered. The Alciphronian reflects those values.
Its literary pages demonstrate that students were expected not merely to study but to participate in a broader intellectual culture. The involvement of Oglethorpe University Press further reinforces this point.
Although only a brief attribution, the reference connects the yearbook to Atlanta's larger educational and publishing networks. Schools and universities existed within a shared cultural ecosystem. Students moved from one institution to another. Alumni maintained relationships. Publications circulated ideas. The literary section preserves a glimpse of that world.
In many respects, the page containing Scruggs and Bealer serves as a microcosm of the entire archive. It links past and future, school and city, education and culture, and achievement already recognized with achievement still waiting to emerge.
Most importantly, it demonstrates that the 1938 Alciphronian was not merely documenting a graduating class. It was presenting an institution that saw itself as part of Atlanta's broader intellectual and cultural life.
Viewed in that light, the literary section becomes one of the most important pages in the entire volume. It reminds us that schools do more than prepare students for professions. They also cultivate imagination, creativity, curiosity, and intellectual ambition. The pairing of Anderson M. Scruggs and Alex W. Bealer Jr. stands as enduring evidence of that mission, preserved within the pages of a yearbook that has become far more than a yearbook.
Foote & Davies and the Physical Production of the Alciphronian
Founded in the nineteenth century, Foote & Davies grew alongside Atlanta itself. By the early twentieth century the company ranked among the South's most important printing concerns, producing catalogs, annual reports, educational publications, promotional materials, and a wide variety of commercial printing projects. Its involvement in the Alciphronian therefore connects the yearbook to a broader history of Atlanta publishing and graphic arts.
Most readers naturally focus on the people and stories preserved within a yearbook. They notice the student portraits, literary contributions, advertisements, faculty pages, and signatures. Yet all of that material first had to be transformed into a finished book. In 1938 that process required planning, typesetting, printing, binding, and coordination between editors, photographers, advertisers, and printers.
Foote & Davies filled that role for the Alciphronian. The company advertised in the volume, printed the volume, and identified itself through the emboss on the rear cover. Its contribution was not the creation of content but the professional production of the finished publication.
The distinction is important. The students, faculty, advertisers, and editors supplied the substance of the yearbook. Foote & Davies supplied the technical expertise necessary to transform that material into a durable object. Its advertisement emphasizes specialized experience in annual production, highlighting craftsmen, designers, and production facilities dedicated to projects of this type.
The quality of the finished volume reflects that expertise. The typography, layout, photographic reproduction, and binding all contribute to a publication that remains attractive and functional nearly ninety years after it was produced. While careful ownership undoubtedly aided its survival, competent manufacturing played a role as well.
The emboss on the rear cover serves as a reminder of that contribution. Much like a maker's mark on a piece of furniture or silver, it identifies the firm responsible for producing the object. For collectors and historians, the mark provides a direct connection to one of Atlanta's major printing companies and to the commercial infrastructure that supported educational publishing in the city.
Foote & Davies was not the author of the Alciphronian, but it was an important participant in its creation. The company provided the technical foundation upon which the students, faculty, and advertisers built the publication. As a result, the yearbook survives today not only as a record of Boys' High School but also as an example of the professional printing industry that helped document Atlanta's educational and civic life during the early twentieth century.
Conclusion
Viewed as a simple school annual, the 1938 Alciphronian is an attractive and well-produced yearbook from one of Atlanta's most respected educational institutions. Viewed through the lens of the surviving Kenny archive, however, it becomes something considerably more valuable. The volume preserves not only the students of Boys' High School but also the city that surrounded them: its hotels, businesses, printers, educators, advertisers, writers, and civic leaders. It captures a generation standing on the threshold of adulthood just before the disruptions of the Second World War and documents the networks of institutions that helped shape modern Atlanta.
The significance of the archive lies not in any single photograph, signature, advertisement, or piece of ephemera. Rather, it lies in the way these elements survive together. The literary contributions of Anderson M. Scruggs and Alex W. Bealer Jr., the signatures of classmates and faculty, the advertisements of long-established Atlanta businesses, the surviving report card and associated papers, and the physical volume itself combine to create a richer historical record than any individual component could provide alone.
Nearly ninety years after its publication, the Alciphronian remains what all successful yearbooks aspire to be: a record of a particular place, a particular community, and a particular moment in time. Through the preservation efforts of Edwin Kenny and the survival of the materials associated with him, that moment remains accessible to modern readers. What began as a school publication has become an unexpectedly detailed window into prewar Atlanta and the young men who would help carry the city into the modern era.
