WHS What was New in 1921/1922 Gayle Faulkner Kosalko November 2020

What Whiting High Students would come to love and avidly read first appeared on October 14, 1921. It was named “The Tattler” and was the school’s very first semi-monthly school paper. Its staff had been elected by popular school vote as opposed to those particularly interested in journalism. In later years, it would be the Journalism teacher who chose the editor.

But for this first year, its staff included Editor-in-Chief Reba Sternberg, Assistant Editor Irvin Moore and Athletic Editor of Boys, Alexander Wayo. The Athletic Editor for Girls was Margaret Winkleried whose parents owned a restaurant at Five Points. She later gained fame for running her parents restaurant, Margaret’s Geneva House, which was well known in the area.

There was also a Social and Dramatic Editor, a Business Manager and even two different students whose positions on the new school paper were “Cartoons” and “Jokes.”

This being 2020, it makes the Tattler itself 99 years old! And the greatest thing is that the WR Historical Society now has an original copy of it.

We were first approached by the late Bonnie Corondon who herself was a graduate of WHS. As a member, she attended our Historical Society meetings and told us that her brother had the first copy and that they would like to donate it to us. Her brother Bill Corondon used to work in the print shop when he was a young guy. He found this first Tattler just lying around and decided this was something that needed to be preserved. Bill took very good care of it because for paper, almost a century old, is in very good condition.

On the cover of Vol. 1 No. 1 is the Whiting High Football Squad, Whiting High School’s official first football team. While writing about how universities, such as Harvard and Yale, were starting to build football stadiums the writer wrote that “Nothing shows more strongly the permanent popularity of the sport, unless one consider the accompanying pictures as further evident of its popularity.” Although they had lost their first game to Froebel the day before the paper came out, they had big hopes for an upcoming game against Blue Island High School.

The paper is full of invitations to receptions and dances such as one the Sophomores held for the whole school. Not to be outdone, the Seniors gave a reception in the school Auditorium for all the incoming Freshmen.

There was a column entitled Class New for All that printed the names of the newly elected officers and sponsors of each class.

The Faculty Advisors for the TATTLER itself were Miss Hurst, Miss Hunter and Mr. Vesely who would correct the student’s contributions a to composition, spelling, and rhetoric. A rough sketch of the upcoming issue’s cartoon has to be approved by the Art Supervisor and the Editor in Chief as to its being a suitable and appropriate subject for the paper.

Now as soon as you turned to page 2, there was an editorial by Principal Lamar Grubb, laying out a few ground rules for having a school newspaper.

He wrote that “in general, the high school paper is a plaything. It may be made decidedly beneficial or distinctly harmful but that properly done, it can be a powerful help to the school and its activities.”

He wanted to see coverage of all social societies, sports for both sexes and an opportunity for students to express their opinions on school policy and other happenings.

Now the origin of the name of the new school newspaper came from a periodical of the same name (minus one “t”) that first appeared in London in April of 1709. Throughout the next 99 years, students would learn of essayist Sir Richard Steele in their World Literature Classes junior year. In his small newspaper “The Tatler,” Steele wrote about entertainment, society, and what was the latest pleasure going on in London. He set the standards for good taste and criticized poor behavior such as drinking and dueling.

With the exception of not commenting on dueling, Principal Grub’s new “Tattler” philosophy was very similar.

Grub wrote that “silly personal references should be eliminated and humor should be in good taste.” And Steele himself would have approved of Grub’s addition that a “bit of clever verse is desirable.”

Whiting High School students were in no longer living in the War years and the Whiting consolidated system of school city was the only one existing in the entire nation. It was a time of excitement and the 1921-1922 school year presented fresh new ideas and programs. It was a time for change.

Bobbed hair, jazz, flappers, shorter skirts and a new vocabulary were in when the paper began. Female students were now marcelling their hair for senior pictures

Perhaps as a backlash to the War, the teaching of the German language ended and the teaching of French and Latin began. Baseball was also offered for the first time.

The new football team, whose photo debuted on the front page, made Whiting one of the few four-sport schools in Lake County.

Also with the war over, the1921-1922 was finally in the construction phase for the school city’s newest building, a Junior High on New York Avenue. While plans had begun earlier, the Great War halted all thoughts of building for two years. After the war there were problems with high prices and an arbitrary Tax Board. But this was the year it would all come together. This new three floored building would feature a kindergarten room, a social room, physical education and a swimming pool on its basement floor. The main floor would have seven classrooms, a Principal’s office, a lantern room and, best of all, a beautiful 900 seat auditorium.

And just as a football team, the construction of a new building, a school newspaper, and the completion of a print shop were all happening, this was the year that the School began its first Dramatic Club who would happily appear in the new auditorium. Over 50 students became members and produced four or five different performances throughout their first year. There was a lengthy article about the beginnings of this Dramatic Club featured on page 2 of the first Tattler. The article said that the purpose of the club was to “give members an opportunity to become better acquainted with Dramatic Literature and stage work.” Students had to try-out to become a member.

They would also study the work of great actors and the production of cinema work. To that end, it was apropos that their new auditorium had a modern moving picture projector.

At the end of the feature it was said that after a few months, its members would be able to compete with Ben Turpin and Pearl White, silent picture show actors of the period.

Though the addition of new sports teams and a student drama organization were important, the fact that the School City invested the largest amount of its money in their Manual Arts Department shows their concern that their students obtain a skill which could later lead to employment.

In 1921 the school added a Print Shop which offered a splendid opportunity for those who wanted to take it up as a trade after graduation. The new Print Shop set up and published the new “Tattler.” A newly hired Mr. Bernard J. Vesely was their instructor. Vesely would teach at WHS for 42 years. The print shop’s job was to print posters, forms, stationery and the school newspaper on its “Little Giant” press.

Because of its success its first year, a larger press and more type cases were added to the department. Mr. Vesely also taught the fundamentals of making layouts, cutting stock, linoleum blocks and book-binding. He even organized Whiting’s first Camera Club and set up a dark room in which his students learned about developing and enlarging film. Mr. Vesely was the “go to man” for the entire school.

The 1946 Reflector contained the following tribute to Mr.Vesely: ''If anything needs fixing, our hard-working print shop chief can do it. If anything needs doing, he can do it."

Vesely himself was an artist. Many of his intricate woodcut engravings can be found in the pages of the school yearbooks, “The Reflector.”

With the coming of new technology, the true hand art of printing started to change. By the early 1960’s the school had a Verityper (a special typewriter that justified its own columns) and the use of a Headliner, a machine that made large font headlines and a hot wax machine. Now members of the Tattler staff not only wrote their columns, they had to cut, layout and paste the stories onto sheets which were then run off on an offset press.

English teacher Mr. Alexander Kompier became the sponsor for the Tattler in the 1960’s. By 1967 his staff enlarged the newspaper to eight pages every two weeks, had large Christmas and Senior Editions printed. There was even the introduction of color (very crude by today’s standards) but color nonetheless.

A school newspaper is a treasure. It’s a small paper time capsule of what was going in the world of young people and the world of Whiting.

The original Whiting high staff may be assured that, like the Tatlers of Steele’s day, their own Tattler was well read and enjoyed and thanks to Bill Corondon, preserved for years to come at the Whiting Robertsdale Historical Society.