The owner of this copy of the Aftermath, the yearbook for the South High School Class of 1916, kept extensive notes and collected news clippings related to her classmates. As a result, the yearbook is not simply a document of the year it was made, but a living text, documenting births, marriages, deaths, and accomplishments spanning more than 60 years.
The yearbook also contains photographs, newspaper clippings, and handouts from the 55th Reunion of the Class of 1916, held at Howard Johnson’s in 1971.
The Yearbook
Faculty
School and Class Songs
Social Clubs
Musical Organizations
Athletics
The Students
Edith Florence Jewell was born in Worcester in 1899, the daughter of grocer Albert B. Jewell and Carrie E. Sampson. She is described in her yearbook entry as “a jewel by name and a jewel by nature,” who was “partial … to the study of physics” and destined to become an osteopath: “We expect her sign hung out before very long.” After graduating from South High, she attended Becker’s Business College and received her D. O. from Philadelphia College of Osteopathy. After completing an internship at Philadelphia Osteopathic Hospital she returned to Worcester, where she worked in private practice, and married Dr. Thomas Hunter, a physician at City Hospital, in 1931. They had one child. She died in Shrewsbury in 1983.
Rudolph Abbott Trow was born in Worcester in 1895 to Frank J. Trow and Lora M. Abbott. His yearbook entry describes him as a “successful manager” who had helped to direct many of the programs of the YMCA. Not long after graduating from South High, he joined the Marine Corps, and served in France under General Smedley D. “Gimlet Eye” Butler. After returning from the war, he studied law and accounting at Northeastern University, and married Mildred A. Wilkins in 1922. He worked in several banks in Worcester in the 1920s before landing a job in the accounting department of American Steel & Wire, where he worked until his retirement in 1961. He was active in many local veterans’ groups, including the American Legion, as well as the Morning Star Lodge of Masons, and was an accredited tree farmer. At the time of his death in 1984 at the age of 88 he was the oldest living Marine Corps veteran in the Worcester area.
Irving Tucker Fogg Ring was born in Searsmont, Maine, in 1897, the son of George E. Ring and Ada M. Fogg, and came to Worcester as a child. According to his yearbook entry, he “loves to hear himself talk and will say more in a minute than his listeners will digest in a month.” He was part of the South High debating team that won the Amherst Cup in 1916 and served as president of the student congress. The class prophecy foresaw him becoming a Congressman. He served in the Navy during World War I, and studied at Boston University and Northeastern University, earning a degree in law. He served as counsel to the State Mutual Life Assurance Company for 31 years. He married Miriam Manning in 1923, with whom he had two children, and later divorced and remarried. He died in 1996.
Maybelle Felice Dann, who went by Felice, was considered to have a “promising future” by her classmates, who predicted that she would become a world-famous musician. She was the daughter of Jacob J. Levy, an English-born clothing dealer, and school teacher Rachel “Ray” B. Levy. In the 1910s, she played cornet in the Bancroft Hotel Orchestra alongside her sisters, Hazel and Blanche. From 1919 to 1923, the Dann Trio — consisting of Felice, Blanche, and their classmate from South High Rosalynd Davis — toured the country with tenor Harvey Hindermeyer to promote Edison Records. Afterward Felice moved to Los Angeles, where she married Frederick Pelton, a movie director, in 1924. He died in 1948, and Felice married Jacob Reed in 1954. She died in Los Angeles in 1987.
Sidney Bigelow Knowlton was born in 1897 to engineer Stephen B. Knowlton and Kate Howard Brewster. In his yearbook entry he was said to have “a fine disposition, as many of the girls have confessed.” He served as secretary of the YMCA as a high school student. His classmates predicted that he would become the head of the history department at Columbia University. He served in the army during World War I, and afterward studied at Clark University and earned a law degree from Northeastern University. In 1924 he married Dorothy M. Hayden, with whom he had two children. He worked in the office of the Massachusetts State Income Tax Bureau in Worcester for 40 years. He died in Hahnemann Hospital in 1972.
Earl Charles Heap was born in Worcester in 1899 to English-born mason James Heap and Rosie Mann. At South High, he was known as a “capable story teller and elocutionist” who was well suited to become an actor, despite his ambition to become an engineer. He attended Tufts University and earned a degree in business administration from Boston University, where he studied in the Burlington mills of the American Woolen Company in Burlington, Vermont. He married Bertha Harriet Adams in 1925 and had three children. They lived in Hartford, Connecticut before moving to Romeo, Michigan, where he was employed as an accountant by McGraw-Edison Company. He died in Michigan in 1972.
Olive Gertrude Hopkins was born in Worcester in 1898, the daughter of Luman Hopkins and Ella M. Call. At South High she showed a talent for athletics, distinguishing herself as one of the five team members who established the Worcester Basketball Championship. While she was undecided in her senior year as to what she would do after graduation, her classmates correctly predicted that she would attend the Sargent School of Physical Training in Boston (now the Boston University College of Health and Rehabilitation Services). Following her graduation from Sargent, she taught physical education in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Morenci, Arizona. She married Joseph Schneider, a professor of sociology at Indiana University, and had two children. She died in Bloomington in 1959.
Rena Alice Morse was born in Worcester in 1898 to Henry A. and Minnie L. Morse. Known for her artistic talent, she created illustrations for the school newspaper, the “Index.” She studied at the Worcester Art Museum School and became the superintendent of drawing in the district surrounding Ayer, Massachusetts. In 1923, she married George Walter Fielder, a fellow member of the class of 1916 and a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Following the wedding, the couple moved to Seattle, Washington, for George’s job as a hydraulic engineer for the federal government. They later lived in Alaska and Syracuse, New York, and had three children. They moved from New York to Florida in 1964. George Walter Fielder died in 1972 and Rena Morse Fielder died in 1992.
The Class of 1916
Reunion 1971
