What Utah State University Looked Like In 1959...Thumbing Through History

I found my father's Utah State University yearbook while looking in some boxes we have not yet unpacked. There's actually three yearbooks. I chose the 1959 edition, the one where my dad graduated with his degree in Engineering.

So much history...

It also has a couple of incredible pictures of Logan, one view looking northeast, the other south from Old Main. How things have changed.

My father passed away when I was eight years old. I never got to ask him about his college days, about things they used to do, what they did for fun. Much of the yearbook has pictures of activities and the greek clubs. My dad wasn't involved in those things...he was married when he attended USU. Still, I would have loved to hear him talk about what life was like as an Aggie in 1959.

I checked the back of the book. They actually misspelled his name. Instead of Harry A. Taylor, he's immortalized in the yearbook under the name, "Marry A. Taylor." I wonder if he thought that was funny or it made him mad.

My father was born in 1924. In a few months he would have turned 98 years old. It made me think...as I thumbed through the pages, I wonder how many of those students are still with us. My father was thirty-five when he graduated. Still, the other students would be in their late 80s now, so many would still be alive. It's strange to look at page after page of faces full of promise wondering how their lives turned out.

I don't know when they stopped publishing university yearbooks. I know they didn't have them when I attended (briefly...) Utah State University in 1984, twenty-five years after my father attended. I wonder if they had yearbooks in 1984, would I be in more than just the one picture? I wonder if I'd be mad if they misspelled my name...

We'll never know.