With a new school year quickly approaching, it felt fitting to take a gander through some antique school photographs. Our postcard example this week contains no handwritten personal note or postmark, but piqued my interest regardless, as it gives names to the faces of the Hart High School Class of 1910, pictured on the front.
This week and next, I will share a little about these students and what records are available about them post-graduation.
There are 13 students in total, six boys standing in the back with seven girls sitting in front of them on the school lawn.
The boys, from left to right, are George Powers, Claude Munger, Clinton Rice, Earl Pettinger, Clarence Aldrich and Percy Lux.
Unsurprisingly, I had to sift through many pages of Powers in the historical society’s master index to find George, but when I did, it became apparent that George Wade Powers (born 1891) was an important figure in Oceana County history. The same year as his high school graduation, George began working at the Collins Clothing store, eventually purchasing the business in the 1920s and founding Powers Clothing, which quickly expanded to several storefronts throughout Oceana County. George passed away in 1985, 29 years after retiring from Powers Clothing. Comparing photos of George as a middle-aged businessman and his youthful school photos, it's not hard to see the resemblance. My favorite observation is that his suit jacket is perhaps one size too big for him.
Next to George is Claude Munger, younger brother to Dr. Louis Phelps Munger, our renowned “Cherry King” of Oceana County. Like L.P., Claude also went into the medical field, graduating from the University of Chicago in 1914 and earning his M.D. from Rush Medical College in 1916. He went on to become a highly qualified hospital administrator, who was called in as a consultant for various different federal offices. He served one year as the president of the American Hospital Administration. He died in Boston in 1950 at age 57, and his obituary was published in The New York Times. In his 1910 senior class photo, it's apparent Claude is one of the younger students, many of whom were 19 and 20 at the time of taking this picture. His face is the roundest and most boyish of the six total young men, and his faintly blurry figure indicates he was not doing a great job at standing still for the camera.
Sadly, I couldn’t find much on Clinton Rice other than a 1910 Oceana County death record, which lists his mother, Alma, dying of typhoid fever in July. She was survived by Clinton and two other sons. Other than the record of his graduation from Hart High School, the OCH&GS has no other records of him. One could imagine that, following his mother’s death at such a young age, he found a life for himself elsewhere outside of Oceana. He is perhaps the most striking figure in the class photo, towering over his male classmates by about half a head.
Other than the record of his 1910 graduation, there is no other information on Earl Pettinger available at the OCH&GS. A cursory search on the internet revealed nothing else on Earl Pettinger. There was the obituary of a gentleman with his same name (“Earl” spelled with an “e” at the end), but who was born in 1937 and passed in 2021. Searching up Earl Pettinger with key words such as “Oceana County,” “Hart High School,” “Class of 1910,” and the birth years of “1890” and “1891” revealed no such luck. All that can be gleaned from the photograph is that he was of remarkably short stature, especially when standing beside Clinton.
Clarence Aldrich is the youngest son of Albert and Carrie Aldrich and is a descendant of Mayflower pilgrims on his father’s side. Clarence was born in 1890, making him 20 at the time of his graduation and this photograph. By 30, he’d fought in WWI on the notorious Eastern Front in Russia. Upon his return, Clarence married and moved to River Rouge in Wayne County, owning and operating a coal and supplies business. He lived to be 70.
From the records at the OCH&GS, all I can find is that Percy Lux played football for Hart High School. When looking him up on the websites Find A Grave and Wiki Tree, it becomes apparent why his records in Oceana County are so sparse, as he was living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a decade after his graduation. At the time of the 1920 census, he was married with three daughters and worked in construction. He died in 1964 at age 73 and is buried in Milwaukee. Like George Powers, he also has some room to grow into his suit.
So there are our young Hartian men of 1910. Next week, I will share a little of what I could find of the seven young ladies sitting on the lawn. For now, here are the girls’ names, just in case any readers know of these ladies: Gertrude Reynolds, Bessie Waterman, Pearl Hunter, Pearl Stern, Hazel Andrews, Lorena Leonard and Janet Richardson.
