Just before Christmas break I spent some time down in the Woodson’s annex, a large work room where we sort out large, sometimes very disorganized new collections. The largest and most disorganized I’ve ever seen is Doc C’s stuff and a portion of it is now laid out across the work tables. I wasn’t even really working while I was there, just looking. There is so much material, so amazing and so varied, that it’s going to take some time to figure out how to approach it all. In the meantime, I was poking around without any intent. When I stumbled across an old high school yearbook my first thought was that it was so random that it was probably something we wouldn’t keep for the collection:
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I opened it and found this note tucked in the front:
(Editor’s Note: There was zero chance, by the way, that Doc would ever throw this out. That warning was meant for me, a known dimwit.)
The problem now, of course, was to figure out why it would be stupid to get rid of the book. I brought it upstairs so I could sit down and read through it carefully and it didn’t take long to discover something absolutely wonderful. The list of faculty is full of early Rice women grads! Look, there’s Adele Waggaman ’16 (of the famous Waggaman sisters), Lel Red ’16, and Helen Weinberg ’17!
Two minutes later I realized that this wasn’t what Doc was talking about. It was the debate coach he was interested in (although in all honesty I care more about the Rice grads):
Next to it I found an 1853 copy of the book of Exodus, translated into Cherokee.
Bonus:
