It was a sleepy day at Lincoln back in early March when a mysterious box addressed to us arrived in the library. It was hefty and from Alaska of all places. As Ms. Scott opened it, she was surprised to find hundreds of old editions of Lincoln’s old newspaper, then called The Totem.
The old editions of The Totem were in very good condition and were dated from the 1940s through the 50s. Attached was a letter from The Fairbanks Genealogical Society, explaining that the papers were left to them by Ed Christiansen, a Lincoln alumni who graduated in 1946.
Ed was quite an active member of the student body at Lincoln, belonging to the journalism club and “The Fire Squad”, a coalition of students who helped enforce a rule still active at Lincoln today, the Up/Down stairs.
While the Up/Down stairs are mostly followed by students today, they aren’t strongly enforced; in Ed’s time, however they took things very seriously. You would certainly be yelled at for going the wrong direction, even teachers weren’t safe! It got to a point where a teacher getting caught going the wrong way was reported on in one edition.
While hallway rules were taken more seriously, student participation and attendance was a different story. Just like today, Lincoln was a crowded school with a whopping 2,800 students. How did they fit 1,000 more students without the many expansions of the later remodels? Did more students just skip? What’s the point of skipping when they didn’t have Red Bull Italian Soda?
In 2026, students don’t have an excuse for shelfing their spirit and lack of attendance, other than of course to fuel the caffeine addiction. In 1944, many students didn’t have a choice. Back then Lincoln was absolutely feeling the effects of WW2, with many students forced to work jobs to support the troops, and some students even serving. Some things like skipping never change, although nowadays our absences can be explained by doomscrolling or hanging out, not a factory job.
In between the cheery headlines describing student life and goofy local advertisements, many articles were more sobering. One issue from a ‘44 edition contains a letter from a student deployed in the grueling two-month battle of Peleliu, an island in Micronesia.
An excerpt from the letter gravely said, “We landed on Peleliu about the middle of September…Before we hit the beach we were under fire…I’m certainly lucky to be alive. An artillery shell lit a few yards from me.”
Today, the legacy of the students who bravely fought in WW2 lives on at Lincoln. The victims of the war are honored near the historic entrance, and their contribution is also noted on the placards near the commons talking about Lincoln History.
Overall, it was extremely interesting to read the old articles of The Totem. There were lots of interesting tid-bits to be found in just a few issues in between the hundreds of them we received. We are currently planning on uploading some or all of these issues online for students to view, and there’s certainly lots more we can learn about Lincoln’s past through these mini time-capsules.
