A Glimpse Into 1924-25 at Saline High School, the People, Culture, and Memories That Started It All

By J.P. DiMaggio

A century ago, there were people alive in America – including in Saline, of course – who still remembered the Civil War.

In 1924, The Great War (later named World War I and termed “The War To End All Wars”) had ended just six years earlier. Looking ahead, no one knew that two seismic events that would change everything loomed: a Great Depression (beginning in 1928) and the U.S. entry in World War II (in 1941).

Thus, some consider years like 1924 and 1925 to be “a calm before the storm.” Indeed, for most Saline students, the 1924-25 school year was probably similar to the year before. However, it was different in one major way: it produced Saline High’s first-ever yearbook.

The Mirror

Few “firsts” from 100 years ago remain today, but an annual yearbook that documents students and their school year is one of them.

Roughly 100 students – that’s all four grades, compared to current senior classes alone of about 450 – attended Saline High in 1924. However, 350 copies of the inaugural 1924-25 yearbook, called The Mirror, were printed. That quantity was needed because, in addition to focusing on the school year, the book served as an Alumni Directory.

“With an alumni numbering well into the hundreds,” staff advisor E.H. Bremer wrote in The Mirror’s Forward, “it has remained for the class of 1925 to seize the opportunity and edit this, Saline High School’s first school annual.”

Alum listings included name, graduation year, profession and then city of residence. It included two alums from the class of 1872, believed to be Saline High’s first-ever graduation class.

Female-Centric

One can learn a lot about students and the time period through a yearbook. For example, The Mirror noted that the school closed during the week of Feb. 20 due to scarlet fever. (Shorter time period, but remind anyone of Covid?) Sifting through The Mirror’s pages, one also sees that Saline High was female dominated.

Of the 27 students shown in senior class photos, 17 were female and 10 were male – and all four senior class officers were girls. The junior class composition was even more pronounced: of 25 students shown in its photo, 19 were girls and just six were boys.

(Farming was the area’s major labor source in 1924, so it’s likely that males were less represented in upper grades due to dropping out of school to become “full-time” farmers.)

Extra-Curriculars

Like the upper classes, The Mirror staff was predominantly female. Nine of the 12 members of its editorial staff were girls, three of whom were first-named Florence. In other words, there were as many girls named Florence as there were boys on the staff!

Continuing the female-centric theme, six women and two men comprised the school faculty. As has been common in their profession, most staff members did more than teach. Bremer, in particular, had a lot on his plate. In addition to being yearbook advisor, he was superintendent, taught social science and coached the “foot-ball” team.

Bremer’s 15-member gridiron squad had a nine-game, regular-season schedule that high school teams still have today. But that schedule differed than today’s in that Saline only played five opponents. That was achieved by playing “home-and-home” games – unheard of today in both the high school and college ranks – with Brighton, Lambertville, Manchester and Pinckney. (Saline also hosted Ecorse in a single game.)

In addition to football in the fall, Saline High offered boys “basket-ball” in the winter and “base-ball” in the spring.

Those who consider girls’ athletics to be a more recent achievement might be surprised to learn that Saline High has fielded a girls’ basketball team since at least 1921. In keeping with the school itself, Saline’s 1924-25 girls’ basketball “first team” – what is now called the Varsity – outnumbered the boys’ “first team” by two players, eight to six.

Mirror & Moving Forward

In a description of the city, The Mirror staff writes that “Saline is one of the most happily located villages in all (of) Michigan.” It also proudly notes that “Saline is blessed beyond the average in creature comforts…” The 90-page annual also features:

• Photos of prominent Saline farms
• A jokes page, evidently common in yearbooks of those days
• Interesting advertisements sure to jog the memories of long-time Salinians

The 1924-25 The Mirror can be found at the Saline Area Schools Historical Archives (SASHA) housed at Liberty School, where 10 copies (in various states) exist.

Sadly, no yearbook copies from 1926-31 currently exist at SASHA. In 1932, the yearbook – renamed The Tower – reappears, but no annuals exist there from 1933-1940. (See related story.) After that, the next yearbook to appear in the Alumni Archives is from 1941 and is named The Salinian, which all annuals have been called ever since.

Building For The Future

Saline Area Schools have experienced tremendous growth since The Mirror rolled off the press of the Saline Observer, the newspaper precursor to the Saline Reporter, in 1925. Swapping his staff advisor hat for his superintendent hat, Bremer ended The Mirror’s Forward by foreshadowed that growth with a not-so-subtle plea.

“We cannot help, in closing, to voice the wish that it may not be long before Saline will be able to boast of a new school building to care for the ever-increasing number of pupils,” he wrote.

(At the time, the Saline High building was the “first” Union School, built for a reported $25,000 in 1868 – just three years after the Civil War ended. Hence, like many schools built before the turn of the century, the Union name.)

Bremer may have had an inkling what might lay ahead in the future. Built in the Depression for a then eye-popping cost of $150,000 on the site of the previous school, the new Union School opened in August of 1930.

Originally built as a high school, at some point in its history Union School literally housed every grade from kindergarten on up. Tens of thousands of Saline children attended it before it was sold to a private firm in 2010.

Author J.P. DiMaggio is a former journalist, was Salinian yearbook editor for 1973-74 and is a member of the Saline High Alumni Committee.