Drafted

Have you ever had to set aside your genealogy goals because someone asked you to help with a different historical project? Well, I have been ‘drafted’ to help with a project for Nemaha Central High School (formerly Nemaha Valley High School).

The high school recently acquired a device called a ‘digital trophy case’. One of the 2022 senior projects created content regarding the sports history of Nemaha Central High School (fall of 2014 to present). As the teacher in charge of senior projects, Cathy Enneking, was not only aware of the content on the device but also of its potential.

Earlier in her career, Cathy created a power point presentation about the history of the school district that she used as a demo in her Oral Communications classes prior to the students creating and giving their own presentations. Thanks to Cathy’s interest in the history of the school and her knowledge about the digital trophy case, she sought and received permission to develop historical content for the device.

Knowing that I had had students create web sites for Nemaha Valley athletics from the yearbook content, Cathy asked if I would be willing to help create this content. The first goal was to create the ‘endpoints’ or an outline for the content. It was decided to group the content under 4 major topics:

• Athletics
• Organizations
• Academics
• History

For each school, the HISTORY tab will lead to the schools that merged to form a new school. Thus, the HISTORY tab for Nemaha Central will break down to Nemaha Valley and B&B. Since both Nemaha Valley and B&B are the result of consolidation in the late 1960s. They will also have a history tab.

The Nemaha Valley history tab will break down to

• Seneca Public High School
• Sts. Peter and Paul HIgh School
• Kelly High School
• Oneida High School

The B&B history tab will break down to

• Baileyville High School
• St. Benedict High School

For each school, we will be working to develop the ACADEMIC tab. Our current goal for each school’s ACADEMICS tab is to add

• Yearbooks
• Senior Panels

Thus, we are on a ‘quest’ to locate a complete set of yearbooks for each of these high schools along with any existing senior panels and hopefully get them digitized.

Thanks to OCI Digital Imaging Service, we have a complete set of digitized yearbooks for Nemaha Valley and quite a few digitized yearbooks for Seneca Public High School and B&B High School.

Since Nemaha Valley started requiring each senior class to have their panel professionally photographed, we have DVDs and negatives for some of the Nemaha Valley panels. However, we will need to get the remaining Nemaha Valley panels photographed along with the B&B panels and any existing panels from the other schools.

Not only have I been ‘drafted’ but I am hoping to ‘draft’ others to help with this project! So, if you live in the Seneca area, help is currently needed to

• locate older yearbooks for the various schools
• photograph existing senior panels

If you can help with this project, please contact Cathy.

Otherwise, take time while in Nemaha Central High School this fall to check out the digital trophy case.