Alpine Hills Museum's GHS display has the Scoop

For decades school yearbooks have counted the passage of time, recording school activities, friends and classmates and providing a glimpse into the past for graduates.

Yes, yearbooks have been a treasure trove of memories.

Until 1965 there was no such thing as a yearbook for Garaway High School.

That’s OK because Garaway High School had Sonya Hostetler Hollinger and Judy (Peterman) Harstine back in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Back in those days, the only way to record historical facts, data and photos was through the GHS newspaper Scoop, where the school journalism class cranked out monthly six-page papers sharing the details of school life back in the day.

Hollinger kept each and every one of the five years' worth of Scoop, preserving them and packing them away for someday.

That someday came 30 years after her Class of 1961’s graduation, when the class reunion brought back a majority of classmates including Harstine.

Harstine, who worked for many years at Belden Brick Co. in Sugarcreek, knew Hollinger had the collection, so she went to work creating a book of copies of Scoop, placing each into a binder that painted the entire picture of their school life at GHS.

That collection made its way to the reunion in 1991, and now, another 34 years later, that collection and some other memorabilia is the featured window display at Alpine Hills Museum, where several old single-seat school desks, a massive slate blackboard and the collection have created — to coin some phrases from 1961 — an outta sight, groovy scene that all the swingin’ cats from Shanesville and Sugarcreek and everywhere else can peruse by hopping into their classic cruisers, burnin’ rubber and beatin’ feet to have a gas at Alpine Hills Museum.

“I had this collection, and I didn’t want it just sitting around at home where nobody was going to have a chance to see it,” said Harstine, who celebrated a 60th anniversary with her husband Sam last week. “So I thought, ‘Why not bring it to the museum to see if they would want to display it somewhere.’ Sonya did such an amazing job of keeping the collection together that I wanted to give others a chance to enjoy a walk back in time.”

Back in the day, Scoop was put together and published by Garaway High School students and contains plenty of insight into the thoughts and activities of the day, from the classroom to athletics, community events and achievements. It also includes plenty of thoughts from the students themselves, which creates a time capsule of history in Shanesville and Sugarcreek.

“Jim Hamsher was the school editor for Scoop back in my day,” Harstine said, noting the publications even included plenty of grade school happenings. “I think it’s the only existing copy of every publication during that era.”

Scoop even saw the students going out into the community to sell ads for the paper. The collection also includes plenty of photos from the class reunion of 1991, so there is plenty of memories to observe.

“We shared a lot of great times from back then, and it’s fun to go back to those days and remember,” Harstine said. “There’s so much school and community in those pages that I’m excited to share with others.”

According to Alpine Hills Museum curator Becky Detwiler, the schoolroom display will be up until at least Labor Day, until they can switch into Swiss Festival mode and create the Swiss Festival queen and court display.

“It will be here for a while, and we invite anyone from that era and who was in those classes to come and visit and sit down and look through some neat history that would be meaningful to them,” Detwiler said.

In addition to the memories, there will be a notebook available for visitors to write down their name and leave comments and memories.

The desks, which Detwiler believes came from Smokey Lane School and one from Esther Yoder, who donated her very own school desk from her youth, also will provide a perfect place for families and especially youngsters to sit down and color pictures with crayons on paper or have fun writing with chalk on the slate boards.

“This is one of very few displays where the public can be interactive and participate with our window display,” Detwiler said.

For those GHS classmates, this collection will be very personal. For others who want to experience a glimpse back into time nearly seven decades ago, it also should be a nostalgic trip worth the price of admission to the museum, which, by the way, is free and features a massive assortment of local history in its three floors.

Alpine Hills Museum is located at 106 W. Main St. in downtown Sugarcreek, across from the World’s Largest Cuckoo Clock. It is open every day but Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.