In 1931, Eugene Field School students presented May Fete

Note: Photo and information reprinted with permission from the Hannibal Free Public Library. LaVergne Wiehe (Miller) mention in the following article is a niece of Miss Mary Wiehe, long-time Hannibal area art instructor.

May 1931

The program for the Eugene Field May Fete, to be held on the school playground at 2 o’clock Friday afternoon, has been announced by Miss Lucy Williams, general chairman, and complete rehearsals are being held daily.

Dancers for the occasion have been divided into three groups according to their grade, and each girl will wear a costume designed to be appropriate for her part. One group will be dressed to represent the wood sprites another will depict the spring flowers, and the third will portray the native costumes and dances of seven nations. In addition, a large group of girls, dressed in the various hues of the spectrum, will form a rainbow background for the dance and the coronation ceremony.

The festival will be opened by a doll dance, followed by the dance of the elves, brownies, clowns, ad fairies, typifying the activities of Pan’s playmates.

Roma Dea Binns, representing Spring, will give a solo dance, in which she will awaken the spring flowers – lilies, roses, daisies, sweet peas, and pansies – each of which, in turn, will give its own dance.

Spring will then beckon in the May Queen and her attendants. Flower girls are to precede the queen’s procession, followed by the attendants – Jane Clark, Dorothy Sellers, Lillian Hoffman and Josephine Lessley, the maids of honor – LaVergne Wiehe and Virginia Fletcher; the queen, Bernadine Lewis; her pages and crownbearer. Spring will complete the ceremony by the crowning of the queen.

Dancers representing Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Poland, Russia, Japan and Spain will dance before the queen, and the festival will close with the traditional May Pole dance.