PRESERVING COLUMBIA Written by Harriet Sigerman. Photography by Carlos Sanchez
- Harriet Sigerman
- Aug 15
- 7 min read
High School’s Past The volunteers who work its archives
T he Columbia High School Archives is a meticulously organized two-room work space in the new Media Center at Columbia. With its neatly labeled file cabinets and shelves full of books by Columbia graduates, the archives exudes an atmosphere of purposeful activity, a welcoming portal to Columbia’s past.
It was not always this way. In 1995, Carol Moran Petrallia, an English and debate teacher at Columbia, received a call about some boxes of old papers pertaining to Columbia housed in the room where she met with her debate class. She and another teacher soon realized there was a wealth of material about Columbia’s history.
Little did Petrallia know that she was embarking on a decades-long journey to organize and catalog those items into an archives as she joined forces with retired teacher volunteers Roseann Sharo, Dr. Carol Collins and Mary Bissinger. These days, her team includes Hannah Edelman, Anne Wessel Dwyer and Kate McMorrow Brown. Together, they have overcome several obstacles, including a pandemic that stopped all work, several hectic moves to different work spaces and a flood that nearly destroyed much of the collection.
The boxes of documents were first housed in a room that several previous librarians and a former principal had outfitted with shelving and cabinets. The contents were ostensibly library reports going back to 1895, but Petrallia and fellow English teacher Edelman discovered other items, such as commencement brochures and musical programs.
Petrallia and Edelman recruited students from the student council to help them go through the material. But they quickly realized that the work could not be done “in blocks of 45 minutes,” as Petrallia says. Edelman describes the chaos they encountered: “I don’t think anyone fully understood what was there and what we really had.” When she first joined the effort, she “almost fainted.” They faced a monumental task of organizing and inventorying the collection.
Early on, at the suggestion of Susan Newberry, Maplewood’s very knowledgeable town historian, Petrallia and Edelman attended a program at the Morristown Advisory Board about how to organize the archives. Out of almost 100 attendees, they were the only representatives from a high school, and they received a wealth of information.
When Petrallia retired in 2006 and Edelman shortly after, they and other volunteers really dug into organizing the archives. “It was just a revelation to find” the range of materials, Petrallia says. Besides the library reports, they found:
Bound volumes of the Columbian, the school’s newspaper, dating back to the 1920s
Boxes of Columbia’s yearbook, the Mirror, dating from 1912 to the present
Volumes of CHS’s student literary publication, the Guildscript
Pictures, school and district news articles, sports-related features, programs from musical and theatrical performances, articles pertaining to the tragic events of 9/ll and historical documents relating to students and the school community
The collection expanded to include books and files by and about Hall of Fame inductees and a growing collection of books written by Columbia graduates. Initially, the archivists went through every item, categorized it and put protective sleeves on more fragile items. Soon, Dwyer, another retired English teacher, and McMorrow Brown, who currently teaches special education at Columbia, joined the all-volunteer archival staff.
They received administrative support from current principal Frank Sanchez, former assistant principal Terry Woolard, Keysha Knight, administrator of the educational departments, and past and current librarians Joseph Fanning, Deborah Cohen, Teresa Quick, Mary Beth DiPrima and Suzanne Ng.
The process of organizing the archives was painstakingly slow but full of intriguing discoveries. Edelman says, “Every time we would come here we would get so distracted . . . because we couldn’t get to our work.”
One such intriguing discovery was a photograph of the senior class in the 1912 senior yearbook of South Orange High School, the precursor to Columbia. Among the 24 graduating students in the picture was a young Black woman. (Alfred Kinsey, valedictorian of the class, and later a famous sex researcher, is also in the picture.)
Her name was Delia Bolden, and an essay she wrote on “The Negro Question” was included in the yearbook. Her fellow classmates had chosen to publish it. Bolden also presented the essay at the senior class commencement exercises, an honor accorded to her by the seniors and teachers. In searing words, she condemned the social and political discrimination that Black people faced almost five decades after the Civil War. She spoke unflinchingly about voter disenfranchisement and lynching but concluded, “In spite of all opposition and hindrances the negro has developed wonderfully in his 47 years of freedom.” In the yearbook, Bolden also wrote as her personal statement, “I hate nobody. I’m in charity with the world,” a quotation attributed to Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels.
Because of this astonishing find, former principal Elizabeth Aaron used Delia Bolden’s life as the basis for Black History Month one year at Columbia, and Jefferson Elementary School was renamed Delia Bolden School. Archivist Anne Dwyer Wessel and Andra Marx, a community member, researched Bolden and discovered that her niece and grandniece live in Montclair. The district board invited them to the renaming of the Delia Bolden School.
The archives also includes class pictures from the district’s other schools. “When you see pictures here . . . you will see children of color in the classes,” Edelman says. Petrallia adds, “It may not be large numbers of children, but you see them throughout the school district. These children are here, and they’re all part of the school. No one is separate.” This district practice was codified in a book written in 1930 by Dr. Henry W. Foster, a former district superintendent, which the archives owns. In it, he stated, “All children will enjoy the right to a public education.”
The archivists’ goal, in Petrallia’s words, is “to organize, secure and preserve the existing collection and all new donations.” They strive to make the archives available to students, faculty, staff and members of the community who want to do research or learn more about Columbia and the community.
The archivists send out newsletters to alumni describing recent finds and have made presentations to alumni gatherings. In addition, they encourage English and social studies teachers to incorporate this material in classroom assignments. A new goal is to begin digitizing the Columbian this fall.
As Petrallia explains, “The Columbian is at the heart of our collection and will provide us with important information about the history of our school and our community.” In 2012, the archives received 17 boxes from the Board of Education, which included more records and attendance information about the district’s schools.
Also included was an ornately hand-written book of minutes from 1814 recording the first meeting of the town leaders to incorporate the school district under the name the South Orange school district, along with plans to build the first schoolhouse in the two towns.
In early September of 2024, shortly after the new school year started, Petrallia received another call, this time a very unhappy one. She learned that water from a burst pipe had damaged or destroyed many boxes of materials, mostly those containing bound copies of the Columbian. Principal Frank Sanchez quickly orchestrated an effort to move everything into his office meeting room, secured a dehumidifier and cleared space to open and dry the damaged bound newspapers, pictures, files and other boxes of material. His office became “the drying zone.”
Wearing masks and gloves, the archivists started salvaging what they could. Social studies teacher J. D. Robinson immediately helped. He showed the archivists how to insert clean sheets of printing paper between the wet pages of documents to absorb the dampness. Every day, the four archivists turned pages to accelerate the drying process, and they carefully removed ruined bindings from bound volumes with an Exacto knife. Fortunately, the yearbooks from the archives had escaped damage because they had been stored in another room, but numerous bound volumes of the Columbian and copies of the Guildscript were destroyed. Several administrators donated their copies of past issues of the Guildscript, and the four archivists hope to replenish the full collection of the student literary magazine.
The archivists and additional helpers continued to methodically insert clean paper between each damaged page. “Six weeks in,” says Petrallia, “we knew we were going to save some things, but it took six weeks to get it to [that] point.” All told, they lost eight boxes of material out of a total of 52. Former teachers and students have contributed items to the archives.
The archivists often get calls asking whether they are interested in a document or item. A couple of years ago, a woman from Michigan wrote to ask if the archives would be interested in some CHS student handbooks from the 1940s, which she had found at a house sale. Petrallia eagerly said yes. The archivists actively seek material, especially about CHS sports and sporting events. Petrallia and Edelman say the archives has changed their perceptions of Columbia.
Edelman comments that notes from board meetings stored in the archives suggest that the arts played a significant role in the school district from the outset. Petrallia adds, “When we go back to these early books . . . [we see] the school always had concerts, they had a band, they had an orchestra.” They learned from the archives that every student class had to write and produce a play. Students also had to write essays, which their fellow students critiqued, sometimes quite critically.
The four archivists are still going through material and organizing and cataloging it. Occasionally students and faculty ask for help with researching the archive’s materials. “We have worked many hours with our students,” Petrallia says. “That’s our greatest joy. We may be retired, but we still love teaching!”
For now, the volunteers plug away, uncovering more information and insights about Columbia and the district. This is unpaid work, which they are doing as a labor of love, though the Achieve Foundation and the PTA Presidents’ Council have provided funds for boxes and other supplies. The archivists believe in the value of their work, knowing they are stewards of a rich archival collection for a school that has shaped so many lives and played a vital role in our two towns.
Harriet Sigerman loves researching American women’s history and has happily spent time in several archives on the East Coast.
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