Photo by Ellen Ferrera
Librarian Sally Ascenzo next to class picture file of the first Bethany High School class of 1889

•January 4, 2017•

By Ellen Ferrera
for the News Progress

When I was growing up in Bethany, the library was a dingy, musky storefront in a block of buildings that isn’t even there anymore. Imagine this librarian’s surprise when I entered the new Marrowbone Public Library with its bank of computers, community room and comfy chairs for casual reading. What a joy to find such a library in a small community such as Bethany.

The head librarian, Sally Ascenzo, ushered me into a side room, and there on a large stand was a collection of all the high school senior class pictures from the first class in 1889 to 1993. The class pictures forward are in a scrapbook nearby.

This collection was originally housed in storage in the high school and was beginning to deteriorate badly.

It was also unavailable to the public. Glenn Austin, Jim McLaughlin and Virginia Weakly rescued the collection and lovingly restored it before giving it to the library for permanent display Ascenzo told me. “There are some pictures in the scrapbook with unidentified students, and we are hopeful that someone will come in and help us identify these classmates,” she said. Word on the street is that every time Glenn Austin comes in, he flips the pictures to his class and leaves it there. I flipped it to my class.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.