Central High School - Red and Black Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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GREETINGS TO CENTRAL HIGH SCHGOL STUDENTS One ot the hardest task of human beings is to think. In fact it is so difficult that unless prodded by someone most people use their minds very ineffectively. Education is for the purpose of training the minds ot youth so that they can and will think, even though they are no longer pushed to do so by teachers and parents. People who learn how to use their mental faculties will have little competition for positions on the ladder ot success in lite outside of the schoolg nor will they be the easy tools ot dictators, but citizens who understand the ways of America. America needs thinking workers and thinking citizens. Central High School has given you the opportunity to cultivate your own talents. It has watched over you, urged you, and encouraged you. When you leave its halls to take your place in the world, will thinking be too hard a task for you? Here's hoping you'll find joy and happiness as a result ot clear and honest thinking. 74

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TRIBUTE Mabel Olmstead had abounding zest for life. Her capacity for appre- ciation was almost unique, and her enthusiasm readily communicated. Her enjoyment of the world about her was contagious to a rare degree. I believe that these gifts more than anything else made her the wonder- ful teacher that she was. She was so eagerly interested in people, whether they appeared in real life or in the pages of the history that she taught. She saw them all with humor and understanding. Her scholarship was of the sort that always remains alive. She loved to travel - to know the backgrounds at first handy and her students benefited incalculably because of her wide acquaintance with the countries that they studied in her classes. While I was a student in Europe, it was my good fortune to make a number of excursions with 'tM. O. during her vacations, in England and in Italy. I saw surely more than twice as much as I should have seen alone. Everywhere delightful experiences of the kind usually missed by the average traveller came our way. She seemed to know by intuition just where to go - and when -- and what to see. And after any particularly fortunate event or discovery, she would laughingly boast, We manage well! Years afterwards she would recall countless entertaining incidents of those trips, many of which I had quite forgotten. It was a joy to have them brought to life again by her clear memory. The memory for interesting or amusing detail was one of the faculties that made her students look forward to her classes with a rare eager- ness. Most of us have had some otherwise dull period in history made real and stimulating to us by her vivid anecdotes in connection with it. But for all the pleasures of being in Miss-Olmstead's classes, none of her former students will fail to remember what standards were set for them there. Hers were no snap courses. We realized in her rigid requirements and in her impatience with slipshod work the integrity of her scholarship. Here again, just as her enthusiasm was contagious, so her keenness of thought somehow-stirred our pedestrian wits. It was an exhilarating experience. The feeling that we all had about her mind and character might be summed up in a remark so often repeated that it became almost a proverb among Central High students of my day: If Miss Olmstead were a man - she would be President. I think that we somehow felt that she spoke with the voice of au- thority in a time when it was already becoming the habit of many teachers to offer their students theories and opinions instead of avowals of belief. The great tolerance that was one of her most outstanding characteristics was built upon good humor and perspective, and went hand in 'hand with her great strength of conviction. What a rare and wonderful combination of qualities! Miss Olmstead's ideal was good citizenship. She felt deeply her own responsibility as a member of a democracy: and in her mind the train- ing of students for sharing that responsibility was paramount. A member of the present Central High School faculty writes me that most of the old guard teachers still at Central, as well as many of the newer teachers who had learned to know Mabel Olmstead, regarded her as the finest teacher there. One man said, That corner fthe left back corner of the faculty roomj will never seem right to me again without Miss Olmstead there, sitting straight and attentive and keeping watch over the best interests ot the students in all that was said and done. They don't make many of her pattern any more. Wzffefuf 4fwC0 Five

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DR. HOMER WILLARD ANDERSON SuperhHendentofInshucHon St. Louis, Missouri Seve