Stephens: A Look Back - 1954

The 1954 Stephensophia has taken on a different format than previous years.

There’s little copy—department and club pages are, instead, full of photos representing the staff, students and respective activities.

The yearbook staff also had a chance to use full color on some pages. The result? These amazing photos:

The yearbook—dedicated to parents—says it’s a pictorial record of the seasons, a “Change in the Year.” Each section is a season represented by a poem written by Lee Saslow '55 and wonderful drawings. A few examples:

“Hi ya there,” is the cry

As the Susies, their roomies spry

Senior beanies all around

Rules and regulations in our heads they pound

Hours spent standing in line

To find out just what course and at what time

Advisers who want to help us decide

How to get our loose ends tied

Senior sisters, hall meetings, too

Learning names like Linda Lou.

And in mid-Fall:

Classes are in fullest swing

Blueroom meetings are the thing

Seniors working hard to show

Timid juniors where to go

And Sophs are learning all the ropes

While Stop Day is a general hope

And in the end

Halloween brings pranks and fun

For Stephens, too, has elves on the run.

Winter:

Parties and dances fill the days

Clubs are chattering of Means and Ways

Then comes Fantasy and cool Sno-ball

And initiations in every hall

Christmas comes and home we trot

To party…and party…and party a lot.

Spring:

Brown stubble grass is disappearing

White robins singing do the cheering

Southern nights but windy, too

Give us of spring a sweet preview

And spring’s finest fever consists in being

Borne on wings of beauty we’re singing.

And, finally:

A good sense of humor

And a happy heart

A knowledge of life

And of people our start

A promise of good things

And a feeling we’ll rate

All this we’ll have

When we graduate.

While copy is limited, there is a short tribute to Laura Searcy, who came to Stephens in 1921 as an English instructor. She is director of the Campus Service Board. The yearbook staff writes: “A few words and a photograph are hardly adequate to do honor to Miss Searcy for the devotion she has shown to Stephens and its students. Perhaps the greatest tribute to be paid her is a living one—the minds she has stimulated, the lives she has charged with richer meaning.”

A few 1954 graduates of note:

Norma Haddad this year is the president of the senior class. She went on to become Norma Eagleton, the first woman elected to a voting position on the Tulsa city commission when she was elected finance and revenue commissioner. A lawyer, she was inducted into Oklahoma’s Women’s Hall of Fame in 1997.

Donna Keyse, Civic Association president, is Donna Keyse Rudolph, author of the Historical Dictionary of Venezuela.

Ann Miller went on to become Ann Hargett who sang Broadway numbers and enjoyed leading roles in operas around the country and toured Europe before becoming director of the First United Methodist Church Choir in Texas. This year, she represents Appreciation of the Beautiful, one of the Ten Ideals.