Some objects arrive as collectibles. Others slowly reveal themselves as archives.
This 1938 copy of The Alciphronian, the yearbook of Boys' High School of Atlanta, began as a school annual. On closer inspection, it becomes something richer: a documented glimpse of prewar Atlanta through one young graduate, Edwin Kenny, and the school, classmates, teachers, businesses, and cultural world around him.
The volume is accompanied by personal ephemera associated with Kenny, including his report card, a religious certificate, contemporary advertising material, and two Decca record inserts preserved inside the book. These survivals matter. They give the yearbook a named owner, a personal context, and a chain of association that turns the annual from an anonymous school publication into a small but meaningful Atlanta archive.
Boys' High School in 1938
Boys' High School was one of Atlanta's most important public educational institutions in the first half of the twentieth century. By the late 1930s, it was known for a serious college-preparatory culture, strong athletics, and a student body that would send many graduates into the professions, military service, business, civic leadership, and public life.
The 1938 Alciphronian captures that world at a particularly important moment. Its students were coming of age during the last years of the Great Depression and just before the Second World War. Many would leave high school, enter college, and then be drawn into wartime service before returning to help shape postwar Atlanta.
The H. O. Smith Era
The institutional force behind Boys' High during this period was Herbert Orlando Smith (1879-1963), principal from 1920 to 1946. A Harvard graduate who joined the faculty in 1909, Smith shaped the school around a rigorous academic model that prepared boys for college and professional life. Alumni later remembered him as one of the defining figures in the school's history.
Another important faculty figure represented in the yearbook is R. L. "Shorty" Doyal (1899-1965), the celebrated football coach whose teams helped make Boys' High one of Georgia's great high-school athletic programs. Doyal led Boys' High through a period of extraordinary football success, including multiple state championships, and later continued his public life in business and county government.
The faculty signatures in this volume are important because they show that the book was not merely passed among classmates. It preserves traces of the teachers, coaches, and administrators who formed the institutional world around Edwin Kenny and his peers.
Students on the Cusp of History
The signatures and names associated with the 1938 Alciphronian reveal a striking concentration of future physicians, veterans, authors, businessmen, civic figures, and community leaders. A single blog post cannot do justice to every name in the volume, but several examples show why the book is more than a routine school annual.
Albert Amis Rayle Jr. (1921-2016) was the senior class president and recipient of the Atlanta Journal Cup as the school's best all-around student. He later attended Columbia, graduated from Emory University School of Medicine, served in the Navy, and became an Atlanta physician associated with Emory and Grady Hospital.
Sidney Isenberg (1921-2011) became an Atlanta physician and civic benefactor. His name would later be associated with the Atlanta History Center's long-running Sidney Isenberg Author's Series, a reminder that the class produced men whose influence extended beyond their professional titles.
Josiah Victor Benator (1922-2024) went on to Georgia Tech, served as an Army officer in Europe during World War II, was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge, and became one of Atlanta's most respected scouting leaders. His life connects the yearbook to Georgia Tech, World War II, Atlanta's Sephardic Jewish community, and nearly a century of civic service.
James Merritt Ethridge (1921-2011) served in the U.S. Army during World War II, studied at the University of Chicago, and became an important figure in biographical publishing. He worked with A. N. Marquis Company, publisher of Who's Who in America, and later became Executive Vice President and Editorial Director at Gale Research Company.
Theodore Peter O'Callaghan Sr. (1921-2010), a Boys' High student from the same period, became a B-17 pilot with the 15th Air Force in World War II, later worked for Southern Bell, and served in Decatur city government, including as mayor.
C. Trippe Slade (1920-2010) graduated from Boys' High and Emory University and served as a medic under General Mark Clark in North Africa and Italy during World War II. His story follows the recurring Boys' High pattern: Atlanta youth, college, wartime service, and postwar professional life.
Byron Sol Cohen (1920-2012) graduated from Boys' High in 1938, served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, and later became associated with Atlanta restaurant and entertainment life, including Hank and Jerry's Restaurant and the Hideaway Nightclub.
Alex W. Bealer and the Material Culture Connection
One of the strongest discoveries in the 1938 Alciphronian is Alex W. Bealer (1921-1980), whose student poem appears in the volume. Bealer would later become a significant author on traditional American craftsmanship, blacksmithing, woodworking, frontier tools, and material culture.
His later books, including The Art of Blacksmithing, Old Ways of Working Wood, and The Tools That Built America, helped preserve knowledge of the crafts, tools, and working methods that shaped American life. For an antiques audience, Bealer is especially meaningful because his career was devoted to explaining the importance of the very kinds of handmade, functional, and vernacular objects that collectors continue to study today.
His presence in the yearbook as a student literary contributor adds an unexpected cultural layer. The volume does not merely contain future doctors and veterans. It also contains a young writer who would spend his adult life interpreting American objects and craftsmanship.
An Alumnus Poet: Anderson M. Scruggs
The literary section also includes work by Anderson M. Scruggs (1897-1955), Boys' High Class of 1915. Scruggs was a dentist, educator, and published poet. His poem is credited from Glory of Earth, published by Oglethorpe University Press, and its inclusion in the 1938 Alciphronian shows the school drawing on its alumni tradition as part of the annual's cultural presentation.
That attribution matters. The yearbook was not simply printing anonymous student verse. It was connecting the Class of 1938 with an earlier Boys' High alumnus who had gone on to publish poetry. The choice reflects an institution conscious of its own legacy.
Atlanta Through Its Advertisements
The advertisement section of the 1938 Alciphronian is one of the most visually and historically rewarding parts of the book. Its opening design has a magazine-like quality, echoing the modern photographic and graphic sensibility associated with publications such as Life, which had relaunched in 1936. The result is not merely a block of student-yearbook advertising; it reads almost like a miniature portrait of Atlanta's commercial and social world.
Several advertisers are especially evocative for Atlanta history.
George Moore Ice Cream Company appears as a reminder of a once-familiar Atlanta brand. The company operated for decades and was known locally well into the twentieth century. Its inclusion preserves a trace of everyday consumer Atlanta: the businesses, tastes, storefronts, and local brands that surrounded students and their families.
The Henry Grady Hotel, opened in 1924 on the former site of Georgia's governor's mansion, was one of downtown Atlanta's major landmarks. By 1938 it was already a prestigious civic and political gathering place, though still relatively new in the city's built environment.
The Cox-Carlton Hotel, originally associated with the Carlton apartments and located near the Fox Theatre, represented Midtown's interwar growth and Peachtree Street prestige. The building survives today in altered form as part of the Hotel Indigo Atlanta Midtown.
The Hotel Ansley Rathskeller adds another layer of urban life. A rathskeller suggested cosmopolitan hotel dining, entertainment, and social gathering. In the context of the yearbook, it helps show the kind of city Atlanta wished to present to itself: modern, ambitious, and socially active.
The Atlanta Biltmore, opened in 1924, was one of the city's great hotels. Developed by William Candler, son of Coca-Cola magnate Asa Candler, and designed by Leonard Schultze, the Biltmore hosted conventions, civic events, social functions, and visitors of importance. Its appearance in the yearbook advertisement section places the students' world in direct contact with Atlanta's elite hospitality and business culture.
Foote & Davies: The Printer Behind the Book
Few names in Atlanta printing carried more weight than Foote & Davies. Founded in the nineteenth century, the firm grew into one of the South's major commercial printers, producing books, catalogs, annual reports, advertising materials, corporate publications, stationery, and school annuals. For generations, Atlanta businesses, schools, and institutions relied on companies such as Foote & Davies to transform manuscripts, photographs, artwork, and advertising copy into professional printed works.
The firm's role in this 1938 Alciphronian is especially noteworthy because Foote & Davies both printed the volume and advertised in it. That makes the yearbook doubly connected to Atlanta history. It documents the city's students, educators, hotels, theaters, restaurants, advertisers, and future leaders while also standing as a physical product of one of Atlanta's important publishing enterprises.
This matters because printing is often invisible until one looks closely. A yearbook does not survive merely because students posed for photographs. It survives because editors assembled copy, artists prepared layouts, advertisers purchased space, and a skilled printer converted the whole into a durable book. Foote & Davies is therefore part of the artifact's story, not just a production credit.
The company's presence also helps explain the quality of the annual. The 1938 Alciphronian was not a cheaply assembled scrapbook. It was a professionally produced publication with literary selections, student portraits, faculty documentation, advertising design, and institutional polish. The printer's role connects the book to Atlanta's broader world of commercial publishing and graphic production.
Edwin Kenny's Archive
The closing figure in this story is the owner himself, Edwin Kenny (1920-2007). Kenny graduated from Boys' High in 1938 and later from the University of Georgia with a liberal arts degree in 1942. He then served in the U.S. Army during World War II and continued military service for decades, eventually retiring as a colonel.
His report card is the key to the archive. It anchors the yearbook to a real student and confirms that the associated papers belong to a named life rather than to a random accumulation of old documents. The religious certificate, Decca record inserts, Chas. N. Walker Roofing flyer, obituary trail, signatures, and yearbook together create a layered documentary record.
That layered survival is what makes the volume special. The yearbook preserves the school. The signatures preserve the social world. The advertisements preserve the city. The inserts preserve fragments of everyday life. The report card preserves the owner.
Why This Yearbook Matters
Most yearbooks survive merely as records of names and faces. Edwin Kenny's 1938 Alciphronian survives as something more. It captures a generation of Atlantans standing at the threshold of adulthood just before the Second World War, surrounded by the teachers, coaches, advertisers, hotels, theaters, printers, and institutions that shaped their city.
Within its pages are future physicians, military officers, authors, civic leaders, businessmen, educators, and public servants. Equally important are the institutions that surrounded them: Boys' High School, Foote & Davies, the Fox Theatre, the Atlanta Biltmore, the Henry Grady Hotel, the Hotel Ansley, the Cox-Carlton Hotel, George Moore Ice Cream, and the smaller businesses whose advertisements preserve the texture of daily Atlanta life.
Taken together, these pieces form a remarkably intact snapshot of Atlanta in 1938: a city preparing to become the capital of the modern South, preserved through the possessions of one young graduate.
To inquire about this volume or to see its surviving ephemera, visit 1-Antiques.com.
