Pictures evoke the old Granite

Look closely at the black-and-white snapshots from 1944, and it's obvious that none of the kids had much money. On some days, there probably wasn't much in their lunch boxes other than slices of bread and butter and a few homegrown vegetables.

So Pam Carson marvels at how the Granite High School Class of '44 was able to pull off an astonishing feat:

The small group of farm kids somehow managed to sell more than $1 million in war bonds and buy three bombers for the U.S. during World War II. Each plane flew missions overseas with "Granite High School" painted in bold lettering beneath the cockpit window.

"Gas was rationed, food was rationed. These kids had nothing, so how did they do it?" asks Carson, flipping through a scrapbook filled with yellow news clippings from Granite's school newspaper, The Granitian. It's really another example of all the good that has come out of Granite High."

Carson doesn't have deep ties to Granite (she graduated in 1964 in Kalamazoo, Mich.), but she is feeling the upcoming closure of the 103-year-old high school as profoundly as any loyal Farmer.

A journalism and yearbook instructor at the school for three years, she's had an up close and personal look at the school's storied past with her students.

In 2006, when Carson and her class learned about the piles of unorganized yearbooks, scrapbooks and other memorabilia stored in various rooms and closets throughout the high school, they decided to turn Room No. 238, the old driver's ed classroom, into an alumni room.

The students hauled old display cases from the basement and filled them with vintage red and blue band uniforms, cheerleader pom-poms, school-musical programs and handwritten report cards. Basketball, baseball and swimming trophies were carefully polished and arranged on shelves.

"Looking at all these memories, we really came away feeling that this is more than just a high school," says Carson. "It's a community treasure. We've all cried our eyes out now that it's about to close. It's such a tremendous loss to the neighborhood."

With the school's final commencement coming up on June 5, Carson wanted to get together for a Free Lunch of turkey sandwiches between classes to share some of the mementos she's gathered for the alumni room.

She and her journalism class grouped the items on tables by decade, from the school's first commencement in 1909 (class of one) to the 2009 final yearbook, just back from the printer.