One of the best parts of writing a book on Shades Cahaba is when someone finds the podcast or book online and reaches out to me with their own stories. This happened recently when Sandra Camper from Lula, Georgia, reached out.
Her father had recently passed away, and while going through his possessions, she came across her grandfather’s Shades Cahaba High School class ring. Her grandfather, Marcus Bailey, graduated in 1925. She searched for Shades Cahaba and came across this website and book, and she reached out to me. Her story goes:
“I ordered your book about Shades Cahaba school off Amazon. I believe my grandfather Marcus Bailey must have graduated from that school in 1925… He was from Rocky Ridge, and so was my grandmother Lillie. Her father William Parkin was a preacher in Rocky Ridge Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Grandad Bailey’s mother i believe had the maiden name Acton. Grandad worked for the railroad briefly, then went to college in Birmingham. Then he married my grandmother in 1932. In the late 1940s they moved to Tucker, GA.”
This is the only Shades Cahaba class ring I have seen, so I was pretty excited to get Sandra’s email. The first thing I did was go online to see if I could find his senior portrait in the yearbook, but I had no luck. 1925 is the only year for which I have not found a copy.
Anyway, I thought you would like to see the ring, which features the Owl mascot and has a similar style to the logo on the yearbooks from that time, and what I followed to create the logo for this project.
