Have you ever wondered if there will be any trace of your time at North Park one, two, or three years after you graduate? Or do you want a look into the past and see what North Park was like in decades past? Inside the library is a vault of yearbooks dating back to 1978 and it is completely free to access for all students who ask. It’s an excellent resource which most students are completely unaware of.
Looking back through the decades of North Park past, it’s amazing how this school has changed. From the vintage style of the staff and students to now extinct clubs such as Typing Club and Cheerleading Team, the old yearbooks provide a look into a North Park alien from the one we know. One highlight includes pictures from North Park’s first theatrical production: Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer, which shows a snapshot into the theatre department just two years after North Park’s opening. Another is the vending machines being stocked with brand name candy bars and non-diet drinks.
It has also provided some interesting perspective on our current yearbook, as all you need to do is crack open any yearbook from the 1990s and it becomes glaringly clear how sanitized the yearbooks are now. With raunchy cartoons and phrases plastering the pages of the old yearbooks, and sloppier layouts and less professional photography, it’s almost hard to believe those yearbooks come from the same school the modern ones do. They work to provide one of the clearest lenses into the past with unabashed honesty. There are pages dedicated to student tattoos, piercings, and scars, as well as a page in the 1998-1999 yearbook titled ‘japanimation’ that one must see for themselves, for words cannot do justice to the sheer late ‘90s aura the page radiates. That’s not to say that modern yearbooks are bad. However, it is apparent the change in yearbook design over the decades.
North Park is home to many staff alumni, one of whom is our principal Ms.Boutros. Having been a student from 1994-1997, we were able to find her in the yearbooks and got to show her her old high school yearbook. Ms.Boutros remarked, “So nostalgic! Flashbacks of being a teenager again. The day students came up to me saying they found me in the old yearbooks was so special! I have to admit it’s a pretty strange feeling going through the old yearbooks and being at North Park as the principal at the same time! If someone told me that imagine you would be back as principal 30 years ago when I was in high school…I would have said they lost their mind. I guess you really never know where life will take you! I love it…very full circle moment for me…” “…I sent photos from the yearbooks to people I’m still in touch with and it made me send a hello to some who I haven’t seen in a while.”
So if you have some free time at North Park, it is well worth spending some time going through the yearbook archive. You might even find the high school photos of your teachers. At the very least it’ll make for an interesting read and look back through the past. As Ms. Boutros responded when asked if she thinks students should look through the old yearbooks, “For sure! You can tell so much about the school, the people, the culture, the activities. Think of the generations of people that walked the same halls and although they may never know each other, they have so much in common…for a snapshot of their life, in high school from different times, they were in the same classes…the same commons, the commons corner, the cafeteria…so many shared stories and memories!”
THE NORTH STAR 