Southern Sem Yearbooks Were Completely Unhinged

Argyles, VMI boys, mysterious captions, and possible mayonnaise crimes

Southern Sem Yearbooks: A Historical Investigation Conducted by Someone With No Authority

I went looking through old Southern Seminary yearbooks and found a strange little bridge between the school that existed before SVU and the school I knew.

This began as research.

That is what I am calling it, because “I meant to look up Donald Trump’s sister and somehow ended up emotionally invested in sixty-year-old yearbook captions” sounds less dignified.

I had started with a specific question. I wanted to learn more about Elizabeth Trump Grau, who attended Southern Seminary before the school eventually became the Southern Virginia University I knew. I thought I was following one thread.

Instead, I fell down the kind of archive rabbit hole where one minute you are looking for a familiar name, and the next you are three yearbooks deep, staring at captions like “Bring me the marshmallow medicine” and wondering whether you have discovered campus history or accidentally joined a secret society.

I will come back to Elizabeth Trump Grau and her Southern Seminary connection in another post because that thread deserves its own space. But first, I have to talk about what happened when I went looking for her and accidentally found Southern Seminary’s entire personality hiding in the yearbooks.

I expected a few nice pictures, some familiar campus buildings, and maybe one or two hairstyles that had clearly made enemies with the weather.

Instead, I found an entire world.

There were formal portraits, club pages, dances, and carefully arranged photographs. There were captions that sounded as though they had been written by girls who were perfectly proper while smiling like they knew where all the good stories were buried.

There were also buildings I recognized from my years at Southern Virginia University, only now they were wearing their Southern Sem identity—an older layer of history I had known was there without fully understanding it. Main Hall was still Main Hall, standing on its hill as though it had been judging young women since the hotel days. Other places had been repurposed so many times that they probably answered to three different names.

Southern Seminary was not my school exactly. I attended Southern Virginia University decades later, after the campus had already changed names, missions, student bodies, and probably several plumbing systems. But as I looked through the pages, I kept seeing little echoes: a doorway, a room, a staircase, a building that had been given an entirely different job.

I would stop and think, “Wait, I know that spot. Or at least I know its weird grandchild.”

That is the strange thing about old school yearbooks. The people are gone, the clothes have changed, and the hairstyles have made several bold choices, yet the buildings are still sitting there like they remember everybody.

Main Hall especially has the energy of a building that has seen too much and would prefer not to discuss it.

When I was at SVU, Main Hall was not merely a building. It was a presence. It had that old institutional feeling that made it easy to imagine ten different versions of student life stacked on top of one another: Southern Sem girls walking through in dresses, SVU students running late to class, someone practicing music somewhere, someone crying somewhere, someone throwing rocks up toward a Craton window to get a friend’s attention, and someone probably eating something in a place where food was not technically allowed.

The same walls, different eras.

Before SVU Was SVU

Southern Sem students once described the Main Building with three words: tradition, character, and style. The building certainly had all three, although I imagine “temperamental plumbing” could occasionally have joined the list.

The school itself existed before the Victorian-style building became its home. It began in Bowling Green, Virginia, in 1867 as the Home School for Girls and later became Bowling Green Female Seminary. The name changed to Southern Seminary in 1900, and the school moved to Buena Vista the following year.

It's new home had originally been built as the Buena Vista Hotel during the town’s late-nineteenth-century boom. The first hotel opened in 1889, burned just over a year later, and was replaced by the brick building that eventually became Main Hall.

In 1919, Dr. Durham purchased half of the school, while his son-in-law, H. Russell Robey, purchased the other half. In 1958, the college was turned over to a board of trustees.

Over the years, Southern Seminary developed a particularly strong reputation for horsemanship and animal science. At one point, about one-third of the student body participated in the horsemanship program, which was considered one of the finest in the country.

One president explained the school’s philosophy this way: “Our role is not to be what most people want but to be what a few people want.”

That sentence says quite a bit about Southern Sem. It was small, specific, and not especially interested in becoming everything to everybody.

Even as the school tried to keep up with changing times, its leaders resisted becoming coeducational or expanding into a four-year college.

“It is another step we are not going to take,” a college spokesperson said in the early 1980's. “This is what we do best, what we know how to do.”

The smallness of the school was both its appeal and, occasionally, its problem. One student admitted that she felt a need to “get out”—meaning off the grounds—almost every day. At the same time, she said the closeness of the school was what had brought her there in the first place.

That contradiction makes perfect sense to me. A small college can feel intimate, comforting, and personal right up until the moment you realize you have seen the same twelve people four times before lunch.

Southern Sem had its own traditions and rhythms. Students and faculty gathered for tea every Wednesday afternoon in the foyer of the Main Building. Athletic competition was divided between two societies, the Athenians and the Cornelians. Students were drafted into one of the societies near the beginning of their time at the school and remained loyal to it throughout their stay.

Then there was Horses’ Christmas, a large annual celebration during which students marched around the front campus with horses dressed as decidedly unhorsey creatures: dogs, sheep, Santa’s reindeer, and whatever else apparently seemed reasonable when you attended a college known for horses but wanted one day off from being one.

All of this gave Southern Seminary the polished appearance of a traditional women’s college: formal portraits, afternoon teas, organized societies, school pride, and “young ladies of refinement.”

But then the yearbook captions show up.

Suddenly the yearbook becomes a room full of girls whispering to one another while the adults believe they are being perfectly well-behaved.

That is my favorite part.

The official version of Southern Seminary featured tradition, character, style, academic programs, and respectable young women preparing for their futures.

The unofficial version involved boys, cigarettes, diets beginning tomorrow, mysterious nicknames, road trips, overflowing sinks, and jokes that apparently required six roommates and a very specific Tuesday night to understand.

A few girls occasionally tested the rules. Someone had a forbidden cigarette. Someone stayed with a boy too long after hours. Someone’s roommate covered for her. Somewhere nearby, an administrator acted as though civilization itself were hanging by one bobby pin.

In my head, Southern Seminary gradually became a cross between A League of Their Own and a Buena Vista boarding-school fever dream: girls sneaking past housemothers, cadets lurking somewhere in the distance, and one poor dean of women trying to keep the entire hill from turning into a cautionary chapel talk.

The yearbooks stopped feeling like dead history. They felt like finding an old message scratched into the underside of a desk—not enough to explain everything, but enough to prove that someone else had been there before you, making jokes, having crushes, forming clubs, performing in programs, getting dressed up, and assuming their private references were much clearer than they actually were.

The school may have disappeared, but it left its personality behind.

Then there were the phrases—the mysterious captions, suspicious nicknames, and words that were technically in English but clearly intended for people who already knew the secret handshake.

I would come across something like “Ipana smile,” “Yes, that’s couchface!” or “Cool as a Buddha moose,” and suddenly I was no longer casually reading a yearbook.

I was an underqualified detective in a cardigan, attempting to solve a campus mystery with no witnesses, no context, and a very real chance that the answer was simply, “Girls in the 1940's thought this was hilarious.”

Which, honestly, fair.

The students did not anticipate that some woman many decades later would be staring at the page on a computer screen asking, “What on earth is api’z, and do I need a vaccine?”

Some phrases are easier to figure out than others.

“Ipana smile” begins to make sense once you learn that Ipana was a toothpaste brand. It was probably describing a large, bright, toothpaste-ad smile. That phrase at least has a door. You can walk through it.

Other phrases feel as though they locked the door and left town.

“That scrubbed and tubbed look” probably meant fresh-faced, wholesome, and ready for polite society. Unfortunately, I am reading it decades later, so all I can picture is a girl being aggressively cleaned and then released back into campus life.

“Time to read your ditty, Frances” sounds like the kind of caption that once had an entire story behind it. Maybe someone wrote a song. Maybe someone had a poem. Maybe Frances was constantly being called on to perform. Maybe Frances had one talent and everyone refused to let her retire from it.

Then there is “Oh, hum, and a bottle of rum,” which my brain immediately translates into pirate nonsense: Johnny Depp wandering in from one side, Peter Ustinov’s Blackbeard drifting in from the other, and me standing in the middle trying to understand why an old yearbook caption has turned into a Disney crossover.

“It’s nice we like Delts!!!” belongs to that timeless category of school humor called “girls talking about boys and pretending this is a complete sentence.” I do not know exactly what they meant, but I know the energy. Some things do not need translation so much as emotional recognition.

So this is not a scholarly review of Southern Seminary yearbooks.

Scholars have footnotes.

I have questions.

Many questions.

Questions like: What exactly was “Batman Pisqualli”? Why was there a Z.B.T. barn party? Who decided “Six Legs Over Texas” was a caption and then simply walked away from the scene? And how many girls in these yearbooks had posture so good that it could make a modern chiropractor weep?

Since Southern Sem yearbooks loved their superlatives, it also seems fair to give the campus I knew a few awards of its own.

Not the Southern Sem students. I am leaving them alone because they already survived whatever hair products, dating expectations, and school rules were happening at the time.

The buildings, however, are fair game. They have been standing there for decades. They can take it.

The back of Main Hall

The SVU Campus Superlatives

I kept looking through the old yearbooks and noticing polished categories such as *Most Versatile*, *Best Posture*, and *Most Attractive*. Eventually, I started wondering what the SVU version would have looked like when I was there.

Not the official version. The honest one. The one written by students who knew which couch was comfortable, which building smelled weird, and which directions to Lexington only made sense after you had already gotten lost once.

Best Posture: Main Hall

Because Main Hall had been standing there judging everybody since the hotel days.

Main Hall does not slouch. Main Hall does not emotionally collapse in public. It may have wiring issues and old-building mysteries, but it carries itself like it expects you to tuck in your shirt and make better choices.

If buildings could raise one eyebrow, Main Hall would have done it professionally.

Most Versatile: The Pool/Student Union Building

Because apparently it was willing to become whatever the school could afford that year.

Pool? Student union? Social space? Random campus gathering area? The building had range. It was not picky. It was essentially saying, “Tell me what the institution needs this decade, and I will put on a different hat.”

There is something very small-college about that. Big universities have buildings with endowments, plaques, and one clearly defined purpose. Small schools have buildings that wake up every morning and ask, “Who am I today?”

Most Likely to Accidentally Become a Landmark: That One Green Door by the Pizza Place

This one is personal.

When I lived off campus in Buena Vista, there was a green door beside the pizza place. It was not glamorous. It was not the kind of thing anyone would put in a brochure unless the brochure was called *Places Where You Will Question Several Life Decisions.*

But in my memory, it became a landmark anyway.

That is how college works sometimes. The places that matter are not always the pretty ones. Sometimes they are strange doors, staircases, hallways, borrowed rooms, shared apartments, and places you passed so often that they became part of the mental map of your life.

The green door was not trying to be symbolic.

That is why it succeeded.

Most Likely to Host a Monopoly Game No One Finished: The Room Above the Pool

Every campus has a room like this: a room where people gather with optimism and leave behind abandoned game pieces, half-finished snacks, and one person insisting they would have won if everyone had stayed committed for six more hours.

Monopoly is not a game. Monopoly is a hostage situation with fake money.

The room above the pool feels like exactly the kind of place where students would begin something with big plans and then slowly drift away when hunger, boredom, social tension, or someone’s crush walking past became more important.

Most Likely to Know More Than It Was Saying: Main Hall, Again

I know Main Hall already won Best Posture, but some buildings deserve multiple awards.

Main Hall had Southern Sem history before SVU students ever arrived with backpacks, church clothes, computer labs, and early-2000s emotional-support flip phones. Before that, it had been a hotel. It had watched people come and go while the meaning of the campus changed around it.

When I was there, I thought I was living my own college experience in real time—which I was. But I was also walking through someone else’s old backdrop.

That is what old yearbooks remind you: you are never the first person to think a place belongs to you.

You are simply the current narrator.

And sometimes the old narrators left captions.

Student-Life Superlatives

Most Likely to Say, “I’m Just Running to Walmart,” and Return Three Hours Later with a Life Story

At a small college, a simple errand could become a field trip, a social experiment, a therapy session, a snack run, and possibly a mild identity crisis.

When there was not much to do, going somewhere—anywhere—felt like an event.

“I’m going to Walmart” was not always a sentence.

Sometimes it was a plot structure.

Most Likely to Always Be in the Craton Common Room

Not living there, exactly.

Just somehow always there, like furniture with a meal plan.

Most Likely to Come Up with Something Fun That Somehow Ended Badly by the End of the Night

The kind of person who started with “I have an idea” and ended with everyone quietly agreeing not to tell Student Life.

Most Likely to Disappear for Three Years, Reappear, and Act Like They Had Been There the Whole Time

No explanation. No dramatic entrance.

Just suddenly back in the hallway like a recurring character whose contract had been renewed.

Most Likely to Get Turned Around Walking from the Library to Robey

A person with many gifts.

Direction was not one of them.

Most Likely to Walk Into the Library and Immediately Forget Why They Came

They entered with purpose.

They left with a random book, a vague sense of guilt, and no memory of the original mission.

Most Likely to Lose Weight During Their First Semester on Cafeteria Food

Not from discipline.

Not from exercise.

Just from looking at dinner and deciding that perhaps hunger had been misunderstood.

Most Likely to Need Two Alarms and Still Require the Person Next Door to Turn One Off

A sleeper so committed that even the alarm eventually started asking for backup.

Most Likely to Attend Every Devotional

Whether from devotion, habit, guilt, social gravity, or because they had already missed lunch and needed somewhere to sit.

A Few Honorable Mentions

Most Likely to Be Misunderstood: Southern Virginia University Itself

A school that could be charming, confusing, ambitious, slightly improvised, and difficult to explain without using at least three commas.

Most Likely to Have a Secret Backstory: Craton Hall

Every old dorm looks as though it knows one story nobody has successfully verified.

Most Likely to Make You Feel as Though You Were in a Period Drama Until Someone’s Nokia Rang: Main Hall Lobby

The architecture said nineteenth-century hotel.

The ringtone said 2003.

Most Likely to Be Allen, Texas's Entire SVU Alumni Chapter

Membership: one. Meetings: informal. School spirit: disproportionate

Most Likely to Be Both Charming and Slightly Falling Apart: The Campus

SVU could make “historic character” and “we really should call maintenance” feel like neighboring academic departments.

Most Likely to Know Everything: The Housekeepers and Lunch Ladies

Students arrived thinking we understood campus life. The people who actually kept the school running knew the rooms, routines, personalities, and stories we treated as scenery.

Most Likely to Be in Someone’s Scrapbook but Not Their Actual Memory: Half the People in Freshman-Year Photos

College scrapbooks preserve many things, including evidence that you once stood beside someone whose full name has now left your brain completely.

Awards for Theatrical Commitment -

Most Likely to Put Will Smith to Shame During a Friday-Night Hangout

One of my off-campus housemates once launched into the *Fresh Prince of Bel-Air* “Papa’s Got a Brand New Excuse” scene with such dramatic force that the rest of us became less like an audience and more like witnesses.

She performed it with enough commitment that Will Smith himself would have had to sit down, take notes, and ask whether she was okay.

Most Likely to Perform “Oops!... I Did It Again” with So Much Commitment That Britney Spears Should Have Been Concerned

No live vocals were involved, but the commitment was real.

She knew every word, every beat, and apparently every legal claim to the song. By the end, it was less lip-syncing and more a hostile takeover of the Britney Spears catalog.

She performed with the kind of full-body conviction usually reserved for music videos, courtroom testimony, and people who know exactly where the hairbrush microphone is.

A Few SVU Flashbacks the Yearbooks Shook Loose

Craton’s Welcome Ceremony

Seeing Southern Sem girls mention fire drills sent me straight back to my own early SVU experience in Craton.

Around the third or fourth night after classes started, the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night. Twenty-six girls came dragging down the stairs to the front of the building in pajamas, hair tied back, half-asleep, looking like the undead had been assigned campus housing.

Some girls wrapped themselves in comforters, which felt less like evacuation procedure and more like emotional survival.

I want to say it happened for about three straight nights before it finally stopped. Firefighters showed up. Nobody looked alert enough to be helpful. We just stood outside in the dark, blinking at one another like, *So this is college? This is the dream?*

It was a brutal way to adjust to being away from home, across the country, trying to figure out classes, roommates, laundry, and whatever Southern Virginia was calling a normal schedule at the time.

The strange thing is that I stayed in Craton for two years and do not remember fire alarms being a regular problem after that. It was simply Craton’s opening act. It's little welcome ceremony.

Some colleges give you a mixer.

Craton gave us emergency lighting and sleep deprivation.

A Campus Held Together by Geography and Good Intentions

SVU did not so much have a campus as a collection of buildings that had agreed, somewhat informally, to become one.

My classes were in Chandler, Durham, the library basement, and houses down the street that had been promoted to academic use. Basketball games were played at the local high school or middle school. Soccer, baseball, and softball happened farther into town, as though athletics had been hidden there for safekeeping.

Off-campus housing often meant actual houses nearby, not glossy student apartments with names like The Retreat or The Preserve.

SVU was less a traditional college campus than a group project between a school, a small Virginia town, and several buildings that had other plans.

From the view of the campus

We spent the year learning endurance, apparently through the ancient educational method of sweating indoors. Then, about a month before graduation, air conditioning was installed in Craton—not for us, of course, but because the building was about to become a men’s dorm for the new football team.

Nothing says “thank you for your tuition” like climate control arriving just in time for someone else.

We were not bitter.

We were just moist, underfunded, and observant.

Main Hall’s Unofficial Resident

Main Hall even comes with its own ghost lore, because apparently a former hotel-turned-girls’-school-turned-college building is legally required to have at least one.

The best-known story is about a little boy supposedly seen or heard on the upper floors, sometimes riding a tricycle as though he missed the memo that quiet hours apply to both the living and the dead.

It immediately makes me picture Danny from *The Shining* pedaling down the hallway, only at Southern Sem the creepy twins would probably be wearing sweater sets and reminding him that men were not allowed upstairs.

The Horse Girls—and the Rest of Us

One of the first places where the Southern Sem students’ personalities really came through was in the horse comments.

Horses have always freaked me out a little.

It is mostly the eyes. They have that sideways, ancient-creature stare that makes me wonder whether they are seeing directly into my soul, silently judging my posture, or whether I am standing in their blind spot and they do not see me at all.

I can never tell whether a horse is ignoring me, evaluating me, or spiritually preparing to become one of those intelligent horse-beings from Gulliver’s Travels.

To be fair to horse people, I understand loving an animal. I just do not personally understand horses, probably because my earliest real horse experience was during a youth high-adventure trip at Turner Falls.

Everyone else’s horse politely continued down the trail. Mine decided several yards back that this was the perfect time to stop, rest, and apparently reconsider both of our life choices.

So when I read Southern Sem yearbook comments about horses, I could not always relate to the horse-girl enthusiasm. The fondness. The stable-based joy. The whole “my noble companion” energy.

But the girls who said they hated horses?

Those were my people.

And yet I can see why horses must have been such a rewarding part of Southern Sem life for the students who loved them. There is something peaceful about beginning class by grooming a horse—brushing it down, getting it settled, and doing something physical and calming before the day officially begins.

Honestly, from a mental-health standpoint, Southern Sem was probably wise to have an equestrian field of study.

I would have supported my horse-loving peers completely.

From a distance.

Preferably outside the visual range of the horses, in case one of them looked over and correctly identified me as someone with weak ankles and no emotional readiness for saddle-based activities.

I also would have had to work very hard not to let my mind wander into darker territory.

Are the horses slowly planning to take down the human race? Are they forming some kind of Animal Farm union? Will I wake up one day and find myself assigned to a stall while the horses hold meetings about “human management” and pasture rights?

So yes, Southern Sem’s equestrian program may have been wise, peaceful, and emotionally grounding.

For other people.

A formal campus photograph can tell me what the buildings looked like. A caption about hating horses tells me which girl was barely surviving riding class.

And I am far more interested in that girl.

Southern Sem Yearbook Captions That Raised More Questions Than They Answered

Once I started looking through the Southern Sem yearbooks, I realized the captions were their own separate historical exhibit.

Some were sweet. Some were polished. Some were probably hilarious if you were sitting in the right dorm room in 1948. And some made me stare at the page like the yearbook had just leaned across the table and whispered something legally concerning.

So naturally, I started sorting them.

Not because sorting helped me understand them.

Mostly because sorting gave me the illusion of control.

Things I Could Absolutely Hear Being Said When I Went to SVU

Yes, Southern Seminary was a different era. The clothes were different. There were more references to VMI, W&L, fraternity pins, smoking rooms, and calling boys on actual telephones.

But some captions could have floated straight down a hallway at SVU:

“I’m hungry.”

“Let’s go to B.V.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“I’m cold, don’t open the window.”

“Does anyone want to go to town?”

“I don’t have a thing to wear.”

“After 12 the fun begins in Room 22.”

“Can I borrow your alarm for the weekend?”

“Please get your lights out.”

“No mail again?”

“Anyone got any food?”

College changes, but college also does not change.

Every generation of students believes it is unique, and then an old yearbook shows up and proves students have always been hungry, broke, cold, tired, dramatic, underprepared, and weirdly convinced that going into town will solve everything.

At SVU, “Let’s go to B.V.” could still absolutely be a sentence. So could “I’m cold, don’t open the window,” especially in an old building where the heating system had two settings: colonial fever and mountain cave.

Southern Seminary girls had phone booths. We had early cell phones, dorm phones, and people yelling down hallways. They waited for letters. We waited for calls, emails, rides, and someone to say they were going to Walmart.

Different decade. Same student species.

The more I read, the more I realized Southern Seminary was not some distant, delicate antique world.

It was college.

It just wore nicer sweaters.

Things That Reminded Me This Was Southern Seminary, Not SVU

My SVU brain kept trying to read these pages through a Church-affiliated-campus lens, and then the yearbook would casually mention smoker hangouts, cigarette brigades, or trading gum for a cigarette.

“Smoker hangout.”

“Anybody got a cigarette?”

“I’ll trade you some gum for a cigarette.”

“It’s time for a cancer stick and a Coke!”

“Black coffee and cigs.”

“Someone donate a carton of cigarettes to her.”

And suddenly my brain would screech to a halt.

The Southern Virginia University I knew was Church-affiliated. There was no smoker hangout in my student memory. Nobody was putting “cigarette brigade” on a yearbook page as though it were a student activity.

But this was not SVU yet. It was Southern Seminary and Junior College, in a different era, with a different culture, and apparently a much more relaxed relationship with tobacco, phone booths, fraternity boys, and whatever was happening after midnight in Room 22.

I am not judging them. The whole country smoked then. Doctors smoked. Teachers smoked. People smoked in restaurants, offices, airports, cars, and living rooms, probably while telling someone else to get more fresh air.

It just creates funny historical whiplash.

One minute I am recognizing the same small-school Buena Vista energy I knew. The next minute the yearbook is casually handing me a cigarette, asking whether I want a Coke, and telling me VMI is on the phone.

Phones, Letters, Mail, and Emotional Long-Distance Infrastructure

Before texting, there was waiting. Before read receipts, there was a mailbox. Before somebody could send “k” and ruin your afternoon instantly, there was time for the envelope to travel several states.

“No more letters to Germany.”

“Upside-down stamps and perfume.”

“That mighty letter.”

“Full mailbox.”

"Who called long distance?”

“I got six letters from Don today.”

“Why write more? I know they’ll phone.”

“A three-cent stamp lasts longer than a ten-cent call.”

The technology changed. The emotional infrastructure did not.

Captions That Made Me Say, “I’m Sorry, What?”

These are the phrases that make me want to build a corkboard with red string like I am solving a cold case. I understand every individual word. As a group, they have packed a bag and left civilization.

“That $200 kiss.”

“Cadet or mink?”

“Daddy says.”

“Pudge & paunch.”

“The Spirit of VMI.”

“There’s a car like Hop’s!”

“Wonder what Hop’s doing now?”

“One from 27… yet…”

“The bear, the beast, the bird.”

“The snake charmer!!”

“Black Cat Expeditions.”

“Walking U.S.O.”

“Money garbage can.”

“What’s that action?”

“Yes, that’s ‘couchface!’”

“Bring me the marshmallow medicine.”

“You’ll be gnawing your elbows soon.”

“Hate loud smiles.”

“Guess what? I’m 48th in line.”

“And guess what I got for a dollar?”

“Brushing nose with toothbrush.”

“Everyone clutches his forehead, it’s the thing to do, always will be.”

“Who else plays children’s records to go to sleep by?”

“Is it my turn to hop again?”

“Punch many onions.”

“Allergic to senators.”

“Llama fur in everything.”

“Cool as a Buddah moose.”

“It’s Sunday and you know what that means!”

“Dadonstu.”

“THE MOLE.”

“Bavarian periods are colorful.”

“Hank, the fish?”

“Retreat to the great white womb.”

“The body uses Geney.”

“What do you want, a medal or…?”

“A sterling silver sandwich caser?”

I do not know what “Cadet or mink?” means, but I know it had emotional stakes.

I do not know what “that $200 kiss” was, but I feel like somebody’s parents would have had follow-up questions.

I do not know who Hop was, but apparently he had a car, a social presence, and enough narrative importance to survive in print.

Some historical records answer questions.

These yearbooks mostly create new ones while wearing pearls.

Dorm Life, Sleep Deprivation, and Possible Incidents

Every dorm has its own ecosystem. There are noises. There are rumors. There are people who sleep through alarms. There is always one person crawling on the floor for reasons no one wants to explain.

Southern Sem apparently had all of this and then decided, “Yes, let’s preserve it for future generations.”

“Midnight fights?”

“Come in, come in, whoever you are!”

“There’s someone in here!”

“Quick, use the corner!”

“Mary, there’s a man on the fire escape.”

“Holly, is there someone else in the room besides you and me?”

“Knock on the closet door again.”

“Shouts in her sleep.”

“The mice are after me!”

“Pardon, I can’t understand why you’re crawling on the floor.”

“It’s broken—it won’t stop squirting.”

“I’m taking my umbrella to the bathroom with me.”

“Linda shaved my head.”

“Please don’t ask about Barbara.”

“I’ve only been talking four hours.”

“Tomorrow you will die.”

“Wake me up so I can go back to sleep again.”

“Janie, it’s 7:00—get up!”

“Where is my watch?”

“I don’t have to get up till ten.”

“Wake me when you leave.”

“Can’t sleep without my fan.”

“Silence before noon.”

“Jane and Judy, for the last time—GET OUT OF BED.”

Honestly, “Please don’t ask about Barbara” may be the most powerful sentence in the whole yearbook.

I was not going to ask.

But now I have to.

Housekeeping, Chores, and Signs of Shared Living

Nothing says “girls’ school yearbook” like a caption that sounds one part dorm assignment, one part crime-scene inventory.

“Quick, the sink’s overflowing.”

“Turn that water off.”

“Clothes in the sink again.”

“Please close the door before leaving!!!”

“Who kicked a hole in the wall?”

“Let’s put our dirty clothes in the wastebasket.”

“I’ll sweep; Carolyn, you dust; Liz, you take the riding boots back.”

“All right, who hid the open jar of mayonnaise with the knife in it upside down?”

“All right, who stole it?”

That mayonnaise line is not a caption.

That is a *Dateline* cold open.

Food, Diets, and Snack-Based Emotional Support

This is where the Southern Sem girls become deeply relatable. The hairstyles changed. The dresses changed. The rules changed. But apparently college girls have always been standing around saying, “I’ll start my diet tomorrow,” while thinking about hot dogs.

“Let’s make an apple pie!!!!”

“Marty, let’s start our diet tomorrow.”

“I want a hot dog.”

“Why is everything I want to do illegal or fattening?”

“But these are diet cookies!”

“PLEASE don’t let me eat.”

“Food, mmmmm!”

“Get out of the cookie can, fats!”

“It’s time for another apple.”

“Lime sherbert and vanilla ice cream.”

“Two glasses of buttermilk, please.”

“Judy, do you have to eat that sauerkraut?”

“Don’t forget my olives.”

“Francis, let’s have an egg facial.”

The Southern Seminary girl appears to have been both dieting and hungry at all times, which makes her not only historically interesting but deeply relatable.

Hair, Clothes, Beauty, and Tragic Personal Presentation

The yearbooks also preserve the timeless experience of getting ready, hating the result, and assuming everyone else has somehow solved womanhood.

“My hair looks terrible.”

“Tragic mistake with the hair dye.”

“Where is your peroxide bottle?”

“Why won’t my hair turn out?”

“Please don’t let it turn orange!”

“What color hair next?”

“Extra-light platinum.”

“Oh! I don’t have a thing to wear.”

A modern student might use different products, but the bathroom panic would be immediately recognizable.

School Has Always Been Rude

Some captions do not need historical translation. Accounting was scary then. Psychology was confusing then. Eight o’clock classes were offensive then. The human condition has not improved.

“Oh, transcript again!”

“I just flunked with a B.”

“Preoccupied with the pursuit of knowledge.”

“I will stay up late tomorrow night and study.”

“Oh, I’m so nervous about… Accounting!”

“PSYCHOLOGY confuses me!”

“Finite Math—I can’t do it!”

“I know I’m going to flunk it.”

“Flunk now, avoid the rush.”

“I’m majoring in WHAT?”

“Study? Nah, T.V. please.”

“Eight o’clock classes, ugh!”

“Better set both alarms.”

“Sleeps through three alarms.”

“Lin, don’t forget to set the alarm for 4:00 A.M.”

“Must write a letter, no time to study.”

“Those charge accounts!”

“T.V.? Never watch it!”

The “Eight o’clock classes, ugh!” girl speaks for every generation.

She is not a Southern Sem student anymore.

She is all of us.

Campus Rules and Girls Being Mildly Rebellious

The school had expectations. The students had commentary.

“Rules—ugh!”

“Lights out at 9:30!”

“You’re going to little Vespers, aren’t you?”

“Are y’all coming to little Vespers?”

“Who’s gonna sign us out for what?”

“Party! Party! Rules were made to be broken.”

“Oh, is it illegal?”

“Observer of all rules?!”

Somewhere, an administrator was writing a policy.

Somewhere else, a student was already finding the punctuation that made it sarcastic.

Dating, Math, and Other Social Emergencies

Southern Sem may have had rules, expectations, and chaperones, but apparently the students were also doing Olympic-level dating logistics.

“How many dates do I have tonight?”

“Got to find 13 dates for Sat. night.”

“How can I date two guys the same night?”

“But I already have three dates for Tuesday night.”

“I’ll never get Marge a date again!”

“Eddie’s my love… but willing to date Don…”

“He’s just a friend, you don’t understand.”

“Going to marry a cowboy.”

“Met the nicest little man.”

“V.M.I. parties and that one room.”

“VMI or W&L?”

“Strictly VMI.”

“Jitterbugging with a certain Keydet.”

“There’s something about a uniform.”

“Jitterbuggin' hips."

“A Scarlet with a Melanie complex.”

“I’m gonna have six kids when I get married.”

“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

Some of these sound romantic. Some sound theatrical. Some sound like someone needed a planner, a rideshare app, and a stern talking-to from the dean of women.

Road Trips, Weekends, and Escaping Buena Vista

Small-school life creates a powerful emotional relationship with the phrase “Does anyone want to go somewhere?”

“Love those bus rides.”

“Love those airplane rides.”

“Boston, anyone?”

“Anyone for a weekend in D.C.?”

“Florida or bust!”

“B.V. or bust!!”

“Gonna dine in Buena Vista.”

“Those Roanoke weekends.”

“Fabulous train rides home.”

“Certainly love those midnight bus rides from Washington.”

Going anywhere could become an event. Returning from anywhere could become a story.

Southern, Yankee, Texas, and Other Regional Commitments

The girls also arrived with strong opinions about where they came from and apparently expected the yearbook to document them.

“Beautiful, beautiful Texas.”

“Oh, that Texas drawl.”

“Knows only one state—TEXAS.”

“Typical Texan.”

“True Texan.”

“She put the Panhandle in Texas.”

“A Yankee forever.”

“Yankee turned Rebel.”

“Rebel vs. Yankee.”

“Mercy, y’all.”

College may broaden your horizons, but it does not necessarily make a Texan stop mentioning Texas.

Things That Made Me Wonder Whether Their Parents Read the Yearbook

Imagine mailing tuition money to Southern Seminary and then opening the yearbook to discover that your daughter’s printed legacy included long-distance phone calls, fraternity weekends, cigarettes, mysterious boys, and the sentence “What’s a budget?”

“Pi Kappa Alpha frat parties.”

“Army-Navy lost weekends.”

“Sloe gin.”

“Wine, wine, wine.”

“Aren’t study halls for long-distance telephone calls?”

“What’s a budget?”

“All right, we’ll learn…”

The school advertised music, art, dramatics, home economics, physical education, secretarial science, merchandising, kindergarten training, journalism, library science, and equitation.

The yearbook suggests there may also have been unofficial minors in waiting for boys to call, borrowing cigarettes, going to B.V., not studying until tomorrow, advanced VMI awareness, and budget denial.

I am not saying their parents’ money was wasted. I am just saying the return on investment appears to have included handwriting, posture, social strategy, and a working knowledge of every man within driving distance of Buena Vista.

Compliments That Sound Like They Were Written by a Frenemy

I am sure some of these were meant affectionately.

Probably.

But a few make me want to pull the yearbook staff aside and ask, “Were we honoring her, or did we just publish her weaknesses in hardcover?”

“A good tall round girl.”

“That scrubbed and tubbed look.”

“Extensive shoe collection.”

“How fickle can you get?”

“Green skirt—trademark.”

“Mischievous dimples / Crying dimples.”

“But ummmm legs.”

“Pretty good lookin’ but not too bright.”

“She’s what we like most about the South.”

“Shy, but oh boy when she gets to know you.”

“Drink much fruit punch?”

“This dress makes me look like a football player.”

“What, me look like Jackie Kennedy?”

If someone put “Pretty good lookin’ but not too bright” under my yearbook picture, I would haunt the entire publications committee.

Imagine opening your yearbook and realizing your legacy was “a good tall round girl.”

I would need a meeting.

Not a big meeting.

Just me, the editor, and whoever approved adjectives that day.

Captions That Needed a Chaperone

These are not necessarily inappropriate.

They just feel like they walked into the room without knocking.

“Black cat panties.”

“When the cotton balls get ripe.”

“Look what I made in kindergarten today.”

“Where’s my nerve pill?—candy corn.”

“I know how to imitate Jerry Lewis.”

“Help! I can’t get down.”

Again, I am not saying anything scandalous happened.

I am saying the yearbook did not help its own case.

Animals, Babies, and Other Beings That Needed Supervision

I do not know who Charles was. I do not know whose baby was missing. I do not know why the lizards were organizing.

But I do know this section has the energy of a dorm meeting that got out of hand.

“Feed Charles.”

“Who took my baby?”

“Can you find a home for my little boy?”

“My favorite animal—the MINK.”

“Wild over pink and yellow rabbits.”

“Lizards of the World Unite.”

“Cat crazy!”

“At least my turtle loves me.”

“Have you seen my snake?”

“Can’t get in my room for the wasps.”

“All right, who hid my teddy bear?”

“Her heart belongs to horses—too bad, boys!!!”

This is less of a yearbook section and more of a small-town police blotter written by girls in cardigans.

I am especially concerned about Charles.

Was Charles a person? A pet? A plant? A campus responsibility? A man hidden in the pantry?

The yearbook offers no answers.

Only Charles.

The Ones I Immediately Pictured Michael Scott Saying

Some captions have that exact energy where you can hear someone saying them with complete confidence and absolutely no awareness of how strange they sound.

“Belle of the ball.”

“Gotta lose this love handle.”

“I am trying to run the whole Navy.”

“Almost 100.”

“Telephonitis.”

“I am trying to run the whole Navy” is absolutely something Michael Scott would say after being asked to organize one office birthday party.

The One That Belongs in "The Goonies"

Some phrases are not captions.

They are rallying cries.

“Brave Sem girls never die.”

I do not know what happened before someone wrote that down, but I assume it involved stairs, a forbidden hallway, possibly VMI boys, and one girl saying, “We’ll explain later.”

That is not a caption.

That is a movie title. A dorm chant. Something you yell before climbing out a window in saddle shoes.

And honestly, that may be the perfect Southern Sem yearbook motto.

Things That Aged Like Milk

This is the point where the old yearbook stops being purely funny for a moment.

“Tiny waist.”

“Ability to resist food.”

“Don’t eat too much this summer—you won’t look the same if you do.”

“Keep well though and don’t starve yourself.”

“Remember your diet.”

“Oh, those calories.”

“The scale is four pounds over.”

“I can just have one salad a day.”

Some of the diet lines were written lightly, but when enough of them are gathered together, it becomes clear that the girls were already living with the same exhausting message women have been handed for generations: be pretty, be small, be fun, be hungry—but not too hungry. Eat, but not too much. Look good, but do not look as though you are trying. Whatever you do, come back from summer looking exactly the same.

The handwritten warning not to eat too much over summer is almost funny in how blunt it is until it becomes depressing.

Apparently diet culture did not begin with Instagram. It was already alive and well, wearing pearls, writing in cursive, and telling girls not to change over summer break.

The past was not more innocent.

It just had better penmanship.

Things That Were Actually Sweet

After all the cigarettes, diets, mysterious boys, and Room 22 questions, these lines made me soften.

“A true friend.”

“Friend to all.”

“She’s our sweetie.”

“Calm through the storm.”

“Can count on her.”

“Willing to do anything for anyone.”

“Always cheerful, reserved, and sincere.”

“A friend indeed.”

“Reliable.”

“And a smile for everyone.”

“We all love her.”

“Sweet disposition.”

“Easy to live with.”

“Good natured.”

“Dependable and efficient.”

"Is there anyone who doesn’t like her?”

“Likes everybody.”

The girls were not just punchlines. They were friends.

They noticed who was calm in a crisis. They noticed who was reliable. They noticed who made people laugh. They noticed who would do anything for anyone. They noticed who was easy to live with, which in college may be one of the highest compliments available to humanity.

It is easy to laugh at the slang and dated references. It is harder not to feel something when you realize these were young women trying to describe one another with affection before they scattered back into the world.

The funniest captions made me laugh, but the sweet ones reminded me that behind every strange yearbook quote was an actual girl who had roommates, inside jokes, favorite songs, and lifelong friendships.

And Then There Were the Argyles

Argyle sweaters show up so often that at some point I stopped thinking of them as clothing and started thinking of them as a campus ministry.

Girls knitted argyles. Girls inherited knitting knowledge. Girls were remembered for unfinished knitting. Someone was even described as the noted knitter in *Cry Havoc*, which is the kind of phrase that makes me want to pause the entire historical record and ask, “I’m sorry, was knitting a plot point?”

But that is the joy of these pages. I do not know what half of it means, and that is exactly why I love it.

A modern yearbook tries to look clean and timeless. These old pages were not afraid to be deeply, permanently specific. They preserved the inside joke, the nickname, the bad habit, the crush, the dorm problem, the favorite song, the annoying roommate phrase, and the thing everyone said so often it became her entire personality by spring.

It is funny because it is old.

It is funny because it is young.

Mostly, it is funny because underneath all the pearls, pins, argyles, cigarette breaks, and VMI weekends, the girls are recognizable.

Different decade. Different clothes. Same chaos.

Somebody was hungry. Somebody was cold. Somebody was waiting for a letter. Somebody had nothing to wear. Somebody was going on a diet tomorrow. Somebody had a crush she was trying to pretend was not a crush. Somebody was full of pep, and somebody else probably wanted to hit her with a pillow.

The buildings changed. The school changed. Lexington telephone numbers changed. But somewhere in those captions, Southern Seminary left behind the truth every generation eventually learns:

Girls have always been tired, hungry, dramatic, funny, loyal, overbooked, under-rested, and absolutely convinced they had nothing to wear.

Every generation thinks it invented oversharing.

It did not.

Before Facebook, before Instagram, before vague booking, before group texts, before someone could post “some people need to learn loyalty” with no names but enough clues to start a family meeting, there were yearbooks.

Southern Seminary’s old yearbooks prove it.

They tell us the girls were human. They procrastinated. They flirted. They ate. They worried. They had inside jokes. They complained about class. They made fun of themselves. They smoked. They dieted. They knitted. They wrote letters. They called home. They borrowed clothes. They had favorite songs. They formed clubs. They survived dorm life.

And sometimes they wrote things down that now make a stranger in 2026 sit upright and say, “Wait, what happened in Room 22?”

That is the gift of old yearbooks.

They are not clean history. They are messy history. They are history with hair dye, lipstick, shorthand homework, fire drills, fraternity pins, and one girl saying she has a headache while another is trying to get everyone to go to Buena Vista.

Which is probably closer to real life anyway.

The internet did not invent the group chat.

It just removed the saddle shoes.

Courses Southern Seminary Apparently Also Offered

Southern Seminary and Junior College offered a serious education. The school advertised music, art, dramatics, home economics, physical education, secretarial science, merchandising, kindergarten training, journalism, library science, and equitation.

After reading the yearbook captions, I would like to suggest a few additional courses.

VMI 101: Introduction to Cadet Weather Patterns

This course explores the emotional, social, and wardrobe-related impact of nearby military institutions on the Southern Seminary student body.

Topics include “Spirit of VMI,” “That $200 Kiss,” “VMI or W&L?,” “There’s Something About a Uniform,” and “May I Have Lexington 9006 Please?”

Prerequisite: access to a telephone booth and at least one roommate willing to listen.

ARG 204: Advanced Argyle Studies

This class examines the importance of argyle knitting in mid-century female friendship, romantic ambition, and personal branding.

Students will investigate why so many girls were associated with argyle sweaters, argyle knitting, unfinished knitting, or knitting authority.

Final exam: explain whether knitting an argyle for “no one special” means no one special, or absolutely someone special but we are not saying his name in print.

DIET 195: I’ll Start Tomorrow

This course requires no textbook because society has already supplied too much reading material.

Students will examine recurring yearbook references to diets, food, appetite, tiny waists, candy, chocolate, midnight snacks, and summer warnings about not eating too much.

Final discussion question: How did girls manage to be constantly told to eat less while also being remembered for snacks, sundaes, Coke machines, cherry cobbler, and “Fayne, get some food”?

No one passes this class because the culture was rigged.

PHONE 210: Long Distance and Emotional Suspense

Before texting, there was waiting.

Before “seen at 8:42 p.m.,” there was the telephone booth.

Before “he liked my story,” there was “did he call?”

This course covers Lexington numbers, nightly letters, upside-down stamps, perfume on envelopes, “no more letters,” “got five letters today,” and the delicate art of behaving as though you are not waiting while absolutely waiting.

Students must complete a lab in which they try to have a private conversation while six roommates pretend not to listen.

FOOD 101: I’m Hungry

A foundational class.

Course materials include Coke, Sucrets, chocolate cake, midnight snacks, cigarettes, Bromo-Seltzer, and whatever was available in Buena Vista when someone said, “Let’s go to B.V.”

FINAL SEMINAR: The Southern Seminary Girl Was a Person

This is the course everything leads to.

Underneath the jokes, the yearbooks reveal something more than cute captions. They show young women trying to become adults inside the rules of their time.

They were expected to be attractive but not vain, social but not too forward, educated but still feminine, cheerful but not loud, hungry but dieting, ambitious but marriageable, responsible but fun, polished but not intimidating.

And somehow, in the middle of all that, they still managed to be funny.

They left behind jokes about leaky rooms, cold windows, phone booths, old boyfriends, faculty, food, sweaters, roommates, and the boys who did or did not call.

The school may have advertised character.

But the yearbook preserved personality.

And personality is always better.

Especially when it comes with argyle.

Conclusion: The Yearbook Accidentally Saved the Real Stuff

The more I looked at these captions, the less they felt like random yearbook filler and the more they felt like tiny survival records.

Nobody sat down thinking, “One day, some woman decades from now will be reading this and trying to determine whether ‘Bavarian periods are colorful’ was a typo, a joke, or a cry for help.”

They were simply writing down what made sense to them: the boy who called, the roommate who never got up, the girl who was always dieting tomorrow, the one with the tragic hair dye, the telephone booth, the smoker, the VMI weekends, the sink, the stairs, the fire drills—the whole little world.

That is the charm of it. These phrases were never meant to explain everything. They were meant to make a certain group of girls laugh because they already knew.

And somehow, even without the key, they still work. Not because we understand every joke, but because we recognize the shape of the thing: young women living too close together, staying up too late, wanting too much, worrying over nothing and everything, and accidentally leaving behind a record of themselves that is more alive than any official history could ever be.

Yearbooks are supposed to preserve the official version.

The buildings. The clubs. The officers. The queens. The committees. The faculty. The polished smiles.

But the best part of these Southern Seminary yearbooks is that they accidentally preserved the real stuff.

The hunger. The headaches. The phone calls. The crushes. The cigarettes. The sweaters. The leaky rooms. The girls who were always late. The girls who were always cheerful. The girls who were trying to diet tomorrow. The girls who were waiting for letters. The girls who were loyal friends. The girls who had no money. The girls who were cold. The girls who had nothing to wear. The girls who made one another laugh hard enough that somebody probably told them to quiet down.

That is why I love these captions.

Not because I understand all of them.

I absolutely do not.

But because they make the past feel less like a museum display and more like a hallway.

A noisy hallway. A hungry hallway. A hallway where someone is waiting for a boy to call, someone is knitting an argyle, someone is going to start her diet tomorrow, someone has a headache, someone wants to go to B.V., and someone in Room 22 is apparently having the time of her life.

Southern Seminary became part of the deeper history of a campus that would later become Southern Virginia University, and students like me arrived thinking we were having our own very specific, very current experience.

Which we were.

But we were also walking around on top of all those earlier stories.

That is what I loved about the yearbooks. They made the campus feel layered. Not haunted exactly, although Main Hall could probably pull that off if it wanted to. More like folded. One era folded into another. Southern Sem girls in their yearbook poses. SVU students in early-2000s campus life. The same buildings being asked to hold completely different versions of young adulthood.

The buildings just kept standing there.

By the time I got there, Southern Sem was no longer the school on the sign. But the yearbooks reminded me that it had not vanished as much as it had been folded into the walls.

I started out looking for one Southern Sem student with a famous last name. I ended up finding a whole chorus of girls who were not trying to become historical figures at all. They were just living on that hill, making one another laugh, taking classes, dodging horses, writing captions, and leaving behind tiny pieces of themselves in a yearbook.

Different generation.

Same hill.

Same human nonsense.

The Southern Seminary yearbook tried to preserve a school.

Instead, it preserved the group chat.

And somewhere, in every generation, there is still a girl yelling down the hall because the sink is overflowing.

If a future person ever goes through my college memories and finds one green door, one unfinished board game, one wildly committed Britney Spears lip-sync by my cousin Candace, and one person dramatically reenacting The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on a Friday night, I hope they do not understand everything.

Some things should remain a little mysterious.

That is how you know people were actually living.