In the spring of 1933, 25 of East Hampton High School’s 28 seniors and two chaperones took a class trip to Washington, D.C., as the graduating class had most years since at least 1913. The details of the students’ and their accompanying teachers’ five-day trip were recounted in The East Hampton Star.
The group traveled by train to visit several sites, including the Capitol Building, the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and the Washington Monument. While in our nation’s capital, the students were treated to a party at their hotel and even met the French ambassador.
The students gathered for this photograph are identified from left to right, although in the top row The Star omitted one name. Shown are Richard Bond (chaperone), Robert Dominy, Irving Panzer, Edwin Rowe, Joseph Zenger, James Shott, Karl Boehme, Edwin King, John Gilmartin, Joseph Stone, Claude Jenkins, and John Eichhorn.
In the front row: Margaret Collins, Claire Leek, Helen Bennett, Garnet Blackmore (chaperone), Mary Louise Clark, Nina Gay, Janet Nida, Queenie Simmonds, Bertha Edwards, Martha Greene, Rose Hylwa, Mary McGuire, Mildred Reutershan, and Helen Schellinger.
Of the chaperones, Richard Bond taught commerce and Garnet Blackmore taught French.
As high school seniors, the students pictured here were a few short months from embarking on their adult lives. Some of them, such as Mildred Reutershan, left the state for college. Others cultivated a variety of professions, like Edwin King, who became an architect in Richmond, Va., Joseph Zenger, who became an engineer, and Edwin Rowe, who joined the military.
Two students in the front row became teachers on the East End: Helen Schellinger took a position in Mattituck, and Bertha Edwards (later Bertha Edwards Finch) taught and served as principal at the Springs School for many years.
Moriah Moore is a librarian and archivist in the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.
