Since the founding of Gibson Southern High School, the responsibility of the yearbook has always fallen upon those who participate in the elective publications class. The annual yearbook has never missed a year, with each and every class’s memories stored away forever within each book’s pages, encapsulating time, experiences, culture and distinct moments in the history of Gibson Southern.
In the summer of 2023, approaching the 2023-2024 school year, Gibson Southern yearbook staff stumbled upon a certain issue regarding their plans for the yearbook of 2023-2024. The staff was planning on a simple publication for what would be the 49th issue of the “Mnemosyne,” Gibson Southern’s yearbook. However, upon re-examining the records of the yearbook, the staff realized that although their issue numbers were correct, they failed to recall a certain anomaly that had occurred all the way back in the very beginning of Gibson Southern High School’s history.
“The story as I have it, from looking at our records, is that in 1975 when the school first began, they named the yearbook ‘The Shield,’” said Gibson Southern yearbook adviser Jared Grigsby. “In 1976, the students did not care for ‘The Shield’. As I understand, they did not feel it was representative of a Titan and they renamed it the ‘Mnemosyne.’ In yearbooks, you start with your first one as volume one and move forward. So, since they changed from ‘The Shield’ to the ‘Mnemosyne,’ the ‘Mnemosyne’ in 1976 was volume one, putting us one year behind the history of the school.”
Since the very first yearbook happened to have a different name, “The Shield”, the “Mnemosyne’s” volume numbers were put behind by a year. Being so many years ago, the yearbook staff did not recall the odd change that the yearbook took in Gibson Southern’s earliest year. Furthermore, they did not account for the fact that Gibson Southern, in 2023, currently has one volume of “The Shield” and 48 volumes of the “Mnemosyne.” This means that the 49th volume of the “Mnemosyne” covers the 50th anniversary of Gibson Southern High School in the current 2023-2024 school year.
Upon this discovery, the yearbook staff faced the realization that their previous plans for the 50th yearbook, which had been set for the following school year of 2024-2025, were now going to have to occur in the current school year. With the time to work on it shortened, many of the previous plans for the 50th yearbook were no longer within reach.
“We are expanding the coverage in 2024 to talk about the 50th anniversary of the school,” Grigsby said. “Because this all came so quickly, because we thought we had another year based upon the volume numbers of the yearbook, we really had to scrap a lot of our ideas. We wanted to make the 50th book much bigger, like a 300 page production, but we were going to start working on that in 2023-24 with the expectation of releasing it in 2025. So, it has all been seriously downsized.”
The reactions of the yearbook staff upon learning about the sudden change in plans was largely both surprise and disappointment.
“I was disappointed,” Grigsby said. “My yearbook staff and I, we were deadset that the class of 2025 was the 50th class. We had not actually counted out, but to see the 2025 class and to follow my yearbook numbers, we were certain. It just devastated me because we had lots of plans that were just beginning to take shape. Now, they can’t really be done because to do the stuff we wanted to do was looking to be close to $100,000 worth of things for the yearbook and the student body. Now, we don’t have that time to do any of that, and we have found ourselves in scramble mode for this year.”
In addition, many student staff members felt very overwhelmed by having to manage such a big task in such short notice, especially senior Yearbook Editor-in-Chief Gabby Smitha.
“I wasn’t really prepared for any of this because we talked about how the class of 2025 was going to have a huge book for the 50th anniversary,” Smitha said. “At the beginning of the year, Grigsby called me and was like ‘So, I actually found out that this year is the 50th graduating class.’ It was just overwhelming, and we have to do a lot of things.”
With the discovery of the anomaly in Gibson Southern yearbook’s past, many questions about the true reason why the yearbook changed from “The Shield” to the “Mnemosyne” arose. Former Gibson Southern Yearbook Sponsor Don Stansberry was the sponsor of Gibson Southern’s very first yearbook in the opening year of Gibson Southern, all the way back in 1974-1975.
The opening of Gibson Southern came with many challenges as the students and staff began to establish the identity of Gibson Southern and what it would truly mean to be a Titan.
“To see the influx of students from three communities and to try to get them into some sort of cohesive body, as southerners, as Titans, was sometimes a challenge,” Stansberry said. “But, it was very exciting along the way. I really had a good time.”
“When the school was formed, everything had to be decided,” said Kathy Parks, former Gibson Southern theater director, English teacher and publications advisor. “They tried to keep some of the things from each of the previous three schools, and then make something that was unique. So, you had to try and balance those things.”
With trying to establish the school’s identity being an abrupt task, many things had to be decided for the school quickly. The initial yearbook staff of 1974-1975 had been forced to make a prompt decision on what they would call the yearbook.
“It was an English class, an elective, and you could take newspaper or yearbook,” Stansberry said. “I had both at one time. It was a class project named the yearbook. We put our heads together, voted and came up with ‘The Shield.’”
The thought behind “The Shield” was that it would represent a Titan’s appearance, with the image in mind of a Titan carrying a shield and a thunderbolt.
“What does a Titan need?” Stansberry asked. “Essentially, a thunderbolt and a shield. What do people see first? The shield. [For a Titan, it represents] all of the things: defensive mechanism, protection, to illustrate his might, and his ability, and his stamina, his endurance. We thought it was appropriate. There were other things thrown around, I vaguely remember. It’s been a hundred years ago probably, not really, but you know. I think thunderbolt was one. The more popular one between the two was ‘The Shield.’”
In the following school year of 1975-1976, the yearbook changed sponsors, and the students and staff felt that “The Shield” did not characterize what they wanted to be the true identity of a Titan. So, they changed the title of the yearbook to “Mnemosyne.” Mnemosyne is the Titan goddess of memory.
“I think they wanted something that sounded more historical, as if it had already been established,” Stansberry said. “It had been around for a long time. Quite frankly, no one knew what the world meant, or even how to pronounce it. If I remember correctly, there was a vote. I don’t remember whether it was class taken or maybe a bigger audience. You know, I’ve slept since then. They chose “Mnemosyne,” which is the goddess of memory, and no one knew that. They thought maybe that sounded more sophisticated, more in line with projecting: we’re here, we’re established, this is the way it is.”
“The decision was made to make it more in line with all the decisions that were being made about who we would be, the Titans,” Parks said. “Titans don’t have shields or swords, they don’t do that. They have lightning bolts and magic and stuff like that.”
While some students and staff at the time believed that the yearbook title should have stayed the same, most were simply just looking for something that most everyone could agree upon and would be satisfied with.
“There was no animosity, it just changed sponsors,” Stansberry said. “Everybody has accepted it despite the fact that it was difficult to say and pronounce. But, it did have, in mythology, significance in that Mnemosyne never forgets anything. Mnemosyne has it all and knows all.”
For every year following the 1975-1976 school year, Gibson Southern yearbook has remained the “Mnemosyne.” While the redirection of the yearbook may have caused confusion and disarray for the current yearbook staff in 2023, it is a distinct moment in Gibson Southern’s history. It built the foundation of the yearbook that has, over time, transformed into the yearbook that Gibson Southern knows now.
“In a new direction, [the yearbook] has grown,” Stansberry said. “Gosh, everybody knows about Gibson Southern now. Even though they cannot pronounce the name of the yearbook, it’s a conversation starter. ‘What’s the name of that book? Oh my gosh, what does that mean?’”
