The Last Gasp, from East Hampton High School’s class of 1912, is one of the earliest student publications in the Long Island Collection. The class of 1911 produced the first known local student publication of this type, and The Last Gasp’s preface indicates that students benefited from the preceding class’s example, along with their experience of writing the “High School Haps” column in The East Hampton Star during the winter.
The Last Gasp was published as part of graduation festivities, and each student contributed his or her own graduation essay on a topic of choice.
Clifford Edwards (1895-1979), the class president, wrote the opening salutatory essay, noting that his class was the largest ever to graduate from East Hampton High School. Pages later, May Hand (1892-1971), the publication’s editor, provided the valedictory essay, arguing that graduation meant “not Finis but the end of Volume First.”
Most of the essays consist of persuasive writing, such as Mary Frazer’s “Blessed Be Drudgery,” a politically minded “The Revolt of the Two Hundred” by Fred Sherrill (1894-1977), “A Twentieth Century Fever” by Elbert Osborne (1894-1959), and “Should New York Protect Its Fisheries?” by Leroy H. Osborn (1891-1978).
Humorous additions, all unattributed and filled with inside jokes, appear scattered between essays, including the fictional “A Look Into the Future and a Class Will.” According to the class will, Ned Gay (1894-1947) received “a bright pink and yellow necktie and a determination not to tease the girls or destroy any blue roses,” Charlotte Davis (1896-1989) was gifted “anything to keep her quiet and studious,” and Clara Talmage (1895-1975) received a “voice intensifier and advice to use the same.”
Similarly unattributed inside jokes appear within the columns “Roll Call” and “Stands For,” which match words or phrases with students’ names — for instance, matching S to “Shrinking Son Sherrill,” T to “Talkative Clara Talmage,” and W to “Winding William Wood” (the principal).
Andrea Meyer, librarian and archivist, is the Long Island Collection’s head of collection at the East Hampton Library.
