Published: Saturday, June 9, 2012 1:09 AM CDT

As part of Mount Marty College’s 75th anniversary and its upcoming all-schools reunion, the institution has developed a project that helps preserve the memories and images of the past for all alumni, students and members of the public to enjoy.

The project involves collecting pictures and memorabilia from the past and putting them into scrapbooks.

So far, volunteers have about 200 scrapbooks in place, dating back from the time when the college operated as Mount Marty Academy, a high school. The books also contain artifacts from The Model School, which was an elementary school for the teacher education students at Mount Marty; the Sacred Heart School of Nursing; and Mount Marty  College.

Barb Rezac, chief advancement officer at Mount Marty, said she has been working on the project since she took the job in January.

The scrapbooks contain photos of students showing where they are today; pictures of students, coaches and faculty for each year of the scrapbook; programs from events during those years; The Moderator student newspapers; freshman directories; handbooks; and advertisements.

“It’s going really well, much smoother than we thought,” Rezac said. “We want to be able to allow people to take out the years they went to school here and remember certain things.”

She added that, once the college put out the word that they were looking for items for the scrapbooks, memorabilia starting coming in from all over.

Items have come from faculty members, alumni, and library archives.

Mary (Heirigs) Albrecht added that she would like to see photos of each graduating class for the scrapbooks.

Albrecht graduated from Mount Marty Academy in 1954 and then from Mount Marty College in 1958.

Albrecht and her husband used to own Paul’s Kwik Stop in Yankton. By looking at the photos in the scrapbooks, she was able to recall many of the dozens of students they employed during the years that they owned the     business.

Rezac said one of the more interesting items they have gotten for the books was a catalogue for the students at Mount Marty Academy from the 1931-32 school year. The catalogue contains everything from course requirements to items students needed to bring to school and what students needed to wear to class, social events and other times during the day.

“(In high school), we had to wear a dressy dress and we couldn’t wear anklets. We had to wear nylons,” Albrecht recalled.

One of her most fond memories was the bowling alley they had in a basement at Mount Marty Academy.

“We had to eat family style in the dining room when I went here (for college),” Albrecht added. “We would serve each other meals.”

Sister Ann Kessler, who graduated from Mount Marty in 1953 and went on to teach at the college for 40 years, said she is interested in seeing photos of people she has not seen in a while.

She is also fascinated by seeing her former students now as adults.

“It’s delightful to be able to go through the things,” she said.

Kessler added that there has become a true sense of tradition at Mount Marty, with many alumni sending their children and grandchildren to the school.

Sister Leonette Hoesing, who graduated from the high school in 1934 and is now 97 years old, recalled one of her most vivid memories from the times she had at the high school. She remembers walking over the Meridian Bridge from Nebraska to get to the high school. She would get dropped off right on the Nebraska-South Dakota border because there was a toll at the time of about one dollar for a car one-way. However it was only about 10 cents to walk over the bridge, so she would walk over the bridge to school each day.

The bridge became free to cross in 1953.

Sister Hoesing graduated from Mount Marty College in 1960.

Albrecht had a lot of memories of her times in the dorm rooms at Mount Marty.

She lived in the rainbow dorm room, and remembered there were curtains separating each dorm and bed area. The curtains were all different colors, which is how the dormitory got its name.

Students at that time, Albrecht recalls, would sleep on small beds, about the size of Army cots.

She also mentioned that when someone would get in trouble, their punishment would be to clean the bathrooms in the hall. However, these were cleaned during the day, so often times there would not be much cleaning to do if you got in trouble, she said.

Albrecht, along with her peers at the college, would be able to recognize what sister was walking down the hall based solely on the sound of how they walked.

Kessler remembered staying in a room with six or seven other people — the same room that now houses only two.

Private rooms were offered at that time at Mount Marty, which would house two people, but they were far more expensive than the other dorm rooms.

Rezac said that one of the goals of the scrapbooks is for alumni and current and prospective students to see “life in action” at Mount Marty from past years.

She said that she is fascinated by some of the early items in the scrapbooks just to see how this school was built.

Rezac wonders what scrapbooks will be like in the future because of the increased digital presence. She noted that the student newspaper is now online only, so it may not be possible for that to be included in future scrapbooking projects.

“It is important for parents to be able to show their kids what they did in college here,” Rezac said. “We tell people, rather than throwing things away from college, let us archive your stuff in our scrapbooks.”

She thinks that the scrapbooks will only get bigger after the reunion when alumni look at them and say, “I have this that I can add to the book.”

“We will continue to build the scrapbooks after the reunion is over,” Rezac added. “It will be a work in progress.”

“We need to study the past to know what built this place and where we need to go,” she said.

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