Youth Under the Steps of Lynn Wood Hall at Southern Missionary College

The office underneath the steps was where

We had our fun and where I felt my first

Success that seemed complete, though I a tare

Among the truer wheat.  My little burst

Of glory, small as cap gun bang it seems,

Was there created, not just yearbook style

But silly rhymes in herringbone and screams

Of laughter.  In my short-haired boy blond smile

I fancied that I knew a lot about

The sonnets Shakespeare wrote—and then I wrote

Excuses for some poetry without

A clue how bad the verse was.  What a goat.

  There Smiley had her pups and we had each

    The other, young, beyond death’s distant reach.

~ Phillip Whidden

This signature photo was taken in that yearbook office.