The Names We Share

My maternal grandparents, Ed SULLIVAN and Miriam HUFERD Sullivan, met during their college years. They both attended Chicago Teachers College (CTC). My grandfather was 2 years older than my grandmother. He enlisted in the army not long after he started his first year at CTC. When he returned from World War II and re-enrolled at CTC, he was just a year ahead of my grandmother. The above photograph is of Ed and Miriam on a date some time before they were married. While searching yearbooks online, it was quite fun to find the two of them next to each other in club photographs in the 1947 Chicago Teachers College yearbook. My mother said they were already dating by this point. Below is one of the CTC 1947 Student Council Class representatives photographs. Ed and Miriam are in the middle row, 5th and 6th from the left:   Below is the CTC 1947 International Relations Club. Miriam and Ed are in the middle row, 9th and 10th from the left:  

My maternal grandmother, Miriam (HUFERD) SULLIVAN, was a kindred spirit of mine. She was an elementary school teacher and avid artist, as am I. When I graduated with my degree in art education, she told me she wished she had become an art teacher. As I researched my genealogy, I came across her yearbooks from Chicago Teachers College and discovered she was on yearbook staff and even served as one of the editors, just like me. As I dug through the yearbooks to glean as much information as I could about my grandmother and her time in college, I noticed a drawing on the inside of the cover of her senior yearbook. In the drawing, there is a woman sitting on a stool working on an observational drawing. I thought to myself that it looked like my grandma and wondered who created the drawing. I looked at the bottom of it and sure enough, there was her name. Here is the artwork my grandma co-created for the Chicago Teachers College 1948 yearbook:   And here is a detail of her name at the bo...