To a real swell guy

There's a nice article on yearbooks and Darilee Bednar, a woman bookstore owner who collects them here. I look to my right and see on my office shelves our little collection of yearbooks, four Arsenal Cannon from my husband's high school, four Mounder from my high school, one from Manchester College which I attended one year, The Aurora, two Illio from the University of Illinois which we both attended, three Life from Mt. Morris College, where my parents, grandparents and uncles attended, as well as the parents of many of my friends, a First Fifty Years 1912-1962, for my husband's high school published in the mid-1990s, and a War Record of the people from my home town from Alberts to Zumdahl who served in WWII, with single page biographies and photos, published in 1947. Yearbooks are a treasure, and I'm glad to learn that someone is making a special effort to preserve them.

On Father's Day this year we had dinner at our son's home. I brought along my husband's high school yearbooks to read to the children what his friends had said about him 46 years ago. We got the giggles reading how many times someone wrote "to a really swell guy," or "hellava swell guy," or "real swell fellow," or "it has been swell knowing you." In my school, we translated "swell" as "dill" and "dilly."