9th grade class project provided snapshot of 1960 Hannibal
Tom Maddox, left, and his sister Becky David look through over their family scrapbooks at Java Jive on Sunday afternoon, Oct. 16, 2016. One of the scrapbooks, compiled by Tom in 1960, chronicles Hannibal in that moment in time. He made the scrapbook for a nine-grade civic's project.
Tom Maddox had a homecoming of sorts last weekend, returning to Hannibal from Kansas City to visit family and take part in the 40th annual Folklife Festival.
He has made many similar trips to Hannibal since he first left in 1968 at the invitation of the draft board for service in Viet Nam. But this trip was a little different.
He brought with him a snapshot of Hannibal – photos taken during the autumn of 1960 – collected together in a scrapbook.
Ninth grade project
Corinne Todd Warnick was a Civic’s teacher at Hannibal Junior High School for a number of years. For many of those years, she assigned students a specific project: Create a booklet focused on the history of Hannibal.
“My parents saved everything,” Tom said. “They had all of the Life Magazines in their basement, from 1939 until it stopped weekly publication.”
In addition, they saved notable editions of the Hannibal Courier-Post. These print editions were helpful in creating a meaningful Civic’s project.
Tom was interested in history, even as a child. When he got to college after serving in Viet Nam, he started as a history major, but ended up with a political science degree.
During the fall of his ninth-grade year, 1960, “Dad, my uncle and I went around and took pictures of different businesses and industries.”
He used clippings from his parents’ saved newspapers and magazines, plus the photos as the key elements for his Civic’s project.
In addition, he drew introductory chapter pages.
He said that he received extra credit for the project, but more importantly, he created a snapshot of a moment in time of Hannibal, a project that is now 56 years old.
As he reviewed the project that he created with the help of his father and uncle, sentimentality surfaced, along with misty eyes.
The photos are evidence of how much Hannibal has changed since Tom Maddox’s days as a paper boy for the Hannibal Courier-Post.
