Looking Back: Class of 1924

by Marcia Napier, Grain Valley Historical Society
 
Since today is the last day of the 2023-34 school year, I thought it might be fun to check up on the Class of 1924. Just under 350 students walked across the stage of the 5,800 seat Cable Dahmer Arena in Independence, Missouri, on Monday night.  Each graduate received only 10 tickets to accommodate close friends and family. The eleven graduates in the Class of 1924 were the next to last to graduate from the gymnasium in the original brick building which burned in November of 1925.

Those eleven graduates were Irene Costigan Snow, Roy Gosney, Herman Stokes, Pearl Johnson Kauffman, Jewell Johnson Graham, Lorena Ketterman, Lawrence Cannon, Rosalie Phillips Hostetter, Ina Harris Mitchell, Sallie Beggs Williams and Mae Bailey. From the 1938 Student, Grain Valley High School yearbook, I learned that six were still living in Grain Valley, if you counted Roy Gosney. The Gosney family lived on Colburn Road and had an Oak Grove address, but they were in the Grain Valley School District. (That’s the case for many of our students in 2024).

Of the eight girls in the class all were listed as housewives except Rosalie who was a “Technician” (whatever that meant) living in Joplin, Missouri. Irene Costigan married Ralph Snow and raised her family in Grain Valley. Pearl and her husband lived on the family farm north of town on Ketterman Road. Jewell Johnson married Edgar Graham (Class of 1922) and they had an apple orchard on Buckner Tarsney Road during much of the 1940s and 50s. And Ina Harris (one of the four Harris Sisters) married Bill Mitchell. She worked as a checker for both Minter and Frantz Grocery Stores. She and Bill also raised three daughters,  all GVHS graduates.

There were only three boys in the class. Roy (Gosney) stayed on the farm, Herman Stokes moved to Kansas City and opened his own barber shop and Lawrence Cannon became a teacher, also residing in Kansas City.
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Perhaps some of you recognize one or more of these names. Who knows, you may be living next door to one of their relatives. You might have attended GVHS with one of their children or grandchildren. 

1909 Grain Valley School. Site of Graduation for the Class of 1924.
​Photo credit: Grain Valley Historical Society