This is the kind of stuff I love to hear about. Local people meet local students through education. In this case a Mount Holyoke College anthropology class is learning ethnography by interviewing the former students of South Hadley High School. The MHC students are interviewing SHHS students who attended high school in the building that now houses South Hadley's town offices.

Anthropology is the study of culture. Ethnography is the study of existing cultures using techniques like interviewing and careful observation; the goal is to create a rich description of a culture. In choosing an culture from 50 years ago, however, the MHC project, however, has a definite historical bent. An added interest for those of us in Granby: one of the participants is Beverly Galusha.

Even though 57 years have passed since she attended high school in the 1913 building that now serves exclusively as South Hadley's Town Hall, Beverly Galusha, of Granby, still has vivid memories of the time she spent in the school.

Now her memories, and the recollections of about 50 other graduates of the former high school, are being collected in a project undertaken by anthropology students at Mount Holyoke College.

Using a small microphone and an MP3 audio recorder that can be plugged directly into a computer, MHC juniors Sofia Redford and Melissa Proulx recently listened to Galusha and prompted her memories during an hour-long interview completed in Town Hall for their class, "Doing Ethnography: Research Methods in Anthropology."

Joshua Roth, the professor who teaches the course required for sophomores and juniors studying anthropology, said he contacted South Hadley Historical Society President Bob Judge to learn about what buildings in town could be the focus for an oral history project. The idea, Roth said, was to locate a physical space that would be the starting point for memories.

I think the South Hadley Falls people objected to the South Hadley center people coming in," Galusha said. "Granby was a little hickey town that neither cared about."

But though classism existed, Galusha said the students largely blended well.

With no late buses running, though, and as a twirler who would perform at basketball games or in parades, Galusha would stay after school and then return to the center on foot.

"I used to have to walk a mile back to my house," Galusha said.

Though entire interviews will be transcribed and donated to the Historical Society, only four to five minute excerpts from each interview are expected to appear as audio files on the Web site. The plan is for the Web site to contain a floor plan of the school that will allow people to click on different rooms to listen to the recollections.
"We'll upload to the computer and transcribe the interview, pulling out pieces that will be good for the Web site," Proulx said.

South Hadley has a vibrant and active historical society. Bob Judge, whom I've talked with through email, is the president. Ted Belsky, a former college professor at American International College, who has been active in local politics for decades also helped with the project. He still lectures on history.

--Mb