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While yearbooks might conjure up thoughts of graduation, summer, and the end of the school year – snow days are a very common topic. The anticipation of a snow day is almost a rite of passage for many children who live in cold-enough climates, and the less likely a snow day is, the more exciting it becomes.

The yearbooks in the Virginia Digital Yearbook Collection preserve decades of high schoolers’ excitement over an unexpected day off from school. In 1936 the Fairfax High School retrospective calendar marks February 7th, “Snow storm. Holiday! Kind Providence.”

That does not mean that playing in the snow has been completely forgotten by the high school years. In 1993, Poquoson High Schooler John Dryden described a massive snowball fight:

A group of about 30 people got together for a snowball fight. We played guys against girls, and a guy hit Rebecca Riggins right by the eye so hard with one that it left a bruise. Of course the guys won, probably because we out numbered them by three times.

Some made more unconventional use of the snow, as John McPhail of Annandale High School did in 1993. He confessed, “I packed my friend’s car with snow; I built a snow man in his car.”

Many new drivers quickly come to the realization of how tricky it can be to drive in snow.  In the 1996 L. C. Bird High School Talon, Lance Green relates, “I backed into a snow bank, and my car was in the shop until Thursday. Then, on Friday I hit a patch of ice. I did a couple of 360’s, and I took out three mailboxes, one of which was steel.” Three years later in 1999, Rockbridge County High School student Lindsey Clark lamented that she “was going around a curve, and in the road there was a car spinning in circles. I swerved to miss hitting the car, and I ended up in a ditch.”

So there are definitely pros and cons, and students are not afraid to share their thoughts about them.

Pros

“I value sleeping and the snow days allowed me to recharge my batteries.”

Patrick RaultPoquoson High School, 2000.

“I needed the extra day to relax.”

Amy TaylorPoquoson High School, 1993.

“Ah, television; it's time to sit back and let the learning drain out of my feet.”

Jamie MaxwellPoquoson High School, 2000.

“It's always nice to have a few days off school so we get to play in the snow.”

Megan BlackPoquoson High School, 2002.

“We usually play football. it's great because we get a lot of people and knock the garbage out of each other. It doesn't hurt because your body is so cold and when you hit the ground, the snow is like a pillow.”

Mike GallupGar-Field High School, 1990.

Cons

“...it makes your body stiff.”

Paul WatlingtonPoquoson High School ,1996.

“I hate making up snow days”

Kate RepairRockbridge County High School, 1999.

“I got in my bath tub and pretended it was a swimming pool. I hate snow and love the summer time.”

Shari GrossPoquoson High School, 1996.

“I never thought I would want to go back to school. I missed having a routine.”

Jamila TaylorL. C. Bird High School, 1996.

“Snow sucks. It closes school, the golf course, and everything”

Brad HolsingerLuray High School, 1993.

Others were merely indifferent: “Like usual, I went to work to earn money for my car insurance,” said Trevor Fitzpatrick, a Poquoson High Schooler in 2000. But on the whole, snow days produced strong emotions. And it probably is always preferable to be snowed in at home, rather than school. In 1961, participants in the Northern Virginia District Band Festival, including students from Culpeper County High School, had to sleep over at Fairfax High School due to a storm.

In recent years, with the introduction of “remote learning” and “remote work,” many have wondered if snow days are soon to be a thing of the past. West Potomac High School was pondering this question as early as 1986. The yearbook ominously predicts that “snow days are becoming obsolete, replaced by hurricane days, heat days, bomb threat days and flood days,” only to wrap up that dire view with one we can more readily agree with that, if “the snow day is ever eradicated from existence, it will be sorely missed.”

Jessi Bennett

Digital Collections Specialist

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