Local woman returns 1934 scrapbook to owner's family
Apr. 25—HIGH POINT — A nearly 90-year-old scrapbook that many people might've considered trash has been returned to the owner's family, and they consider it a treasure.
Angela Wall of Trinity found the scrapbook while cleaning out a storage unit of things that had belonged to her late father, High Point native Floyd Austin. The scrapbook was buried in a box of items Austin apparently bought at an estate sale, not even realizing the priceless family keepsake he had purchased.
"Going to estate sales and auctions was something my daddy loved to do," Wall recalls. "He would buy boxes and boxes of stuff."
This particular box included a small scrapbook of mementos from the 1934 graduation proceedings at High Point High School. In the scrapbook, Wall found a commencement sermon program dated May 20, 1934; a report card; several graduation-related receipts ($1.50 for cap and gown, 60 cents for the diploma); a group photo of the graduating class; and individual photos of the scrapbook's owner, Hazel Viola McIntyre, including a portrait of her in her cap and gown.
"That was obviously something she cherished from a special time in her life," Wall says, "so I started wondering if we could find her family and return the scrapbook to them."
She posted a few photos of the scrapbook on Facebook, telling how she had found it and asking if anyone knew anything about McIntyre's family. A High Point Enterprise reporter spotted Wall's post and was able to find an obituary for McIntyre, whose married name was Cochrane.
The reporter provided Wall with a copy of the obituary, which included the name of a surviving son, Bill Cochrane of High Point. The reporter also provided a phone number for Cochrane that was listed online, and Wall took it from there, contacting Cochrane and his wife, Carol, and delivering the scrapbook the same day.
They were stunned — but thrilled — to receive the family keepsake.
"I was just so impressed with how ... (Wall) took the time to hunt us down," Carol Cochrane says. "I kept thinking how, if I was cleaning out a bunch of stuff, I probably would've just tossed it aside."
When Wall delivered the scrapbook, Cochrane gave her a bouquet of hand-picked flowers as an expression of gratitude. And now the scrapbook is making its way around the country to be shared with other family members.
According to Cochrane, her mother-in-law had an estate sale after the death of her husband, Ted Cochrane, in 1984. They had been living in High Point, but Hazel then moved to a retirement community in Winston-Salem.
It's not clear whether Floyd Austin bought the scrapbook at that particular estate sale or if he got it secondhand at another sale, but he ended up with it nonetheless. When he died in 2015, Wall began going through her father's belongings, but it's been a slow, sometimes painful process. Finding and returning the old scrapbook, however, has been a silver lining.
"It's a hard thing to go through my daddy's stuff sometimes, but this has been a surreal experience," Wall says. "It's been such a blessing to my heart."
jtomlin@hpenews.com — 336-888-3579
