by John Shearer
posted August 15, 2006
) |
The book, written by former staff member and former Hamilton County historian Patrice Hobbs Glass of the Class of 1988, chronicles some of the key events and changes that have taken place at the independent girls school over the last century.
So that all alums could enjoy the book, the school carefully decided to publish a quality soft-cover volume.
“So often, schools take an anniversary like a 100th to publish a coffee table book that, though is filled with rich history and beautiful pictures, ends up costing more than some people want to spend on a book about their high school,” said Mrs. Glass, who is now employed at Birmingham-Southern College. “So the plan all along for this book was to create a rich history of the school but be able to give it to our alums. I think this ended up being a beautiful book with such a unique cover that it being soft-sided actually added to the greatness of the book.”
Anne Exum, the GPS communications director, said the book has been well received. It has even earned a nickname – the “bow tie book” – because its cover realistically resembles a white GPS uniform right down to its pleats, buttons and black bow.
At 48 pages long, the legal-sized book includes detailed information about a variety of topics, including the school’s long-term commitment to academic excellence, May Day, Cat-Rat, the class ring presentation tradition, the history of the uniform, the early tradition of walking for exercise, headmasters/headmistresses who have served over the years, and the development of both competitive athletic teams and the school’s various physical plants.
In the section on May Day, it discusses how the school came to have a celebration after Miss Jarnagin observed one in a city park in Chicago in 1913. The book shows an interesting photograph of 1955 May queen Nan Chamberlain with her baby sister, Louise, who would go on to become queen in 1969. Another photograph shows the only indoor May Day – in 1958, when Grace Moore reigned before dying tragically in a 1960 automobile accident.
Biographical profiles are also done on some of the later headmasters, including Dr. Paul Bode, Dr. Nat Hughes and Randy Tucker, the latter of whom has served since 1987.
The first part of the book gives detailed sketches on founders Grace Eliza McCallie, Tommie Payne Duffy, and Eula Lea Jarnagin. According to Mrs. Glass, Miss Duffy and Miss Jarnagin were teachers at Chattanooga High in 1906 and had approached the local school board about allowing girls to attend high school a fourth year and take additional college preparatory classes.
The board rejected that proposal, so the two thirty something women took matters into their own hands. They decided to start their own girls’ school and soon convinced Miss McCallie to join them in their city-changing venture,
The GPS spirit that girls or women can do anything to which they set their minds was born.
Investing $100 each, they spent the summer of 1906 getting Miss McCallie’s home in the first block of Oak Street ready. They probably looked not unlike contemporary GPS students or faculty working on a Habitat for Humanity house during a service project.
Whether they were a little fearful about their bold undertaking is apparently lost in history, but they were soon on their way to success. The day their first advertisement for the new school appeared, Minnie Everett, the daughter of a former classmate of Miss McCallie, became the first student to enroll.
Of the three founders, Miss McCallie, the sister of McCallie School founders J. Park and Spencer McCallie Sr., was the oldest by approximately nine years. She died in March 1918 at the age of 52. In observance of her death, the school was closed for two days.
Miss Duffy served the school until 1945 and died in 1947 while attending a girls’ school conference in Atlantic City, N.J., with her successor, Mary Hannah Tucker.
Miss Jarnagin also retired in 1945 and lived the longest of the founders, dying in 1962 at the age of 85. Her contributions to preserving the school’s history were also enduring, according to Mrs. Glass.
“An amazing source of information was her collection of scrapbooks from the time the school started until several years after her retirement,” she said. “These scrapbooks were full of newspaper clippings, school event programs, notes and other memorabilia that helped piece together not only the factual history of the school but also the spirit of the school.”
Mrs. Glass also went through student publications, minutes from board of trustees’ meetings, and some oral histories compiled by alumnae.
“These oral history interviews were some of my favorite times,” she said. “It was amazing to see the respect that so many women still have for the founders of GPS. Miss McCallie died in 1918, so no one remembered her. But the way that Miss Jarnagin and Miss Duffy are still revered by those who remember their teachings is wonderful.”
Mrs. Glass said the biggest surprise she uncovered was that GPS for years was known as a school for grades 7-12, but that it was actually an 8-12 school during its first seven years of operation. It began admitting sixth-graders in 1999.
But the main theme of her research was not related to any surprises she found so much as a further justification of strong feelings she has about her alma mater.
“Perhaps my greatest joy was to gain a much greater appreciation of what the founders sacrificed to provide young women in Chattanooga a superior education,” she said. “Though as a student at GPS I learned about the founders and the beginning of the school, I never really thought about what it meant for the founders to give up secure teaching jobs at Chattanooga High School, pool all their money and open a school just for girls.
“Not only did they risk their careers and their financial well-being, they went against norms of their day by opening a business and running it completely on their own. The fact that they lived, literally, in an apartment built on the top floor at the school from the day it opened until the day they retired and turned the school over to a Board of Trustees shows that they really did give their lives to GPS.”
| Dining Out | Business | Movies | Focus | About Us |
| Church | Living Well | Memories | Outdoors | Real Estate | Student Scene | Travel |