BY Academy Class of 1897.

BYA records researched to date [July 2007] yield names of 19 collegiate graduates. [18 B. Pd. degrees -- Bachelor of Pedagogy -- plus 1 diploma in the Commercial College Department].

In addition, The (Provo) Daily Enquirer newspaper reported that BYA awarded 12 Bachelor of Didactics (B. D.) collegiate degrees in May of 1897 -- many of the B. D. degrees were awarded to alumni who had received B. Pd. degrees in previous years. Two additional B. Pd. degrees were mentioned in the Daily Enquirer that do not appear in other sources: Louise Hedquist and Moses C. Davis. This brings the number of collegiate degrees awarded in 1897 to 33.

We do not yet have any list of the BYA high school graduates in 1897. We are missing high school Commercial and Normal seniors, and perhaps other high school categories as well. [May 2008].

We have gathered a small number of additional names from other sources of persons who may be 1897 high school graduates, or more likely, honorary members of the BYA High School Class of 1897. Some very focused research is needed to find and document this high school class.

For an extremely detailed description of Brigham Young Academy and its merits, see a story by Ellen Jakeman in the Deseret News, January 23, 1897.

The Commencement story in the Provo Daily Enquirer, May 27, 1897.

Class of 1897? ~ Honorary. Welby Aagard. ~ ~ ~ ~ HIS OBITUARY: Welby K. Aagard, 91, of Mt. Pleasant, Utah, (formerly of Salt Lake City) died January 11, 2007, at home. He was born May 31, 1915, to John E. And Mary Ellen (Nellie) Ostler Aagard in Fountain Green, Utah. He married Opal Draper on March 24, 1939, in the Manti LDS Temple. She passed away May 8, 2004. He attended Brigham Young Academy (high school), Moroni High School and Snow College. He was a lifetime sheep rancher in the Chalk Creek Basin of Summit County, Utah. He served as City Councilman and Mayor of Fountain Green, Utah and as a High Councilman in the Moroni Utah LDS Stake. He served as Vice President and President of the Utah Wool Growers Association. During his life he received recognition as "Sheepman of the Year", "Outstanding Stewardship of Public Lands" from the Bureau of Land Management, "Natural Resource Conservation Award." He will be remembered for his integrity, friendliness, hard work, love for the sheep industry, and dedication to land conservation. He will be sincerely missed by his family. His is survived by his son and daughters, Diane (Neil) Jorgensen of Mt. Pleasant, Utah; Kim (Anna) Aagard of Moroni, Utah; and Marcia Aagard of Mt. Pleasant, Utah; eight grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren; sister, Kenna Rasmussen of Fountain Green, Utah. He was preceded in death by his wife; parents; brothers, Burnell Aagard, John Aagard, Vance Aagard, and twin brother, Wesley Aagard; sisters, Laurel Scholes, LaPrele Neville and Hazel Bailey. Funeral services were held Tuesday, January 16, 2007 in Fountain Green, Utah. Interment, Fountain Green City Cemetery. [Deseret News, Sunday, January 14, 2007.]

Class of 1897? Lavina [Livina] Christensen Fugal was named America's Mother of the Year in 1955. Born September 9, 1897 [actually 1879], in Pleasant Grove, Utah County, to Danish immigrants Anna Katrina Jensen and Jens Christensen, Lavina attended local schools and helped with farm chores. She finished her high school studies at Brigham Young Academy but turned down a scholarship to the University of Utah because she did not have appropriate clothing. Nevertheless she obtained a teaching certificate and taught in Pleasant Grove and Midway, using part of her salary to support her future husband, Jens Peter Fugal, on an LDS church mission. They married and reared eight children: Vida, Alda, Genevieve, Anna, Delbert, Roy, Jean, and John. Her husband died in 1945. Called "Aunt Lavina" by many Pleasant Grove residents who enjoyed her hospitality and admired her ability to accomplish difficult tasks, she served her community and the state in many ways while overcoming personal hardship and illness. Typical of her energy and resourcefulness, at age 73 and on crutches she still managed to repair the roof of her home and paint it. She loved beautiful but hard-to-grow dahlias and began cultivating them first as a hobby and then as a source of income to help her family. Her efforts won wide recognition, but, she told reporter Robert C. Blair, "it's a hard way to make pin money....One season I had to dig 700 holes, each 18 inches deep. [From]...some of those holes I had to haul away a wheelbarrow full of rocks to get things just right." In addition to rearing her large family "in reverence for God and in an atmosphere of love, sympathy and understanding," Fugal served in the auxiliary organizations of the LDS church and in a number of civic capacities. She was especially active in the Farm Bureau, serving as a local president, a county director, and chair of the beautification committee of the Utah State Farm Bureau. The state organization gave her its Distinguished Service Award in 1939. She chaired several Red Cross drives and the state beautification committee during Utah's Pioneer Centennial in 1947. She also served as a member of the Utah County Planning Board and chair of the Pleasant Grove Board of Health. In 1955 she was named Utah's Mother of the Year and then won the national honor. She traveled to New York City and Washington, D.C., to receive her award and meet President Eisenhower. "This is the only place where a hungry, barefoot girl could grow up to have plenty, then fly through the clouds and land in the Waldorf-Astoria," Fugal said. [Lavina Christensen Fugal, Ameria's Mother of the Year, 1955. USHS collections.] ~ ~ ~ ~ At funeral services following her death on June 1, 1969, a neighbor, Merrill N. Warnick, remarked: ''Not many women have lived as full a life as Mrs. Fugal. One of her greatest characteristics was appreciation; another was humility. Her mind always was occupied with something worthwhile." ~ ~ ~ ~ BURIAL RECORD: Livina (sic) C. Fugal was born September 9, 1879 in Pleasant Grove, Utah. Her parents were Jens P. Christensen and Ane K. Jensen Christensen. Livina died on June 1, 1969 in Pleasant Grove, Utah. Her interment, Pleasant Grove City Cemetery, Utah.

B. Y. Academy Class of 1897 or 1898 Commercial College. Albert Jeffries. In 1897 at May Commencement Exercises, Albert Jeffries was called upon to deliver a short speech, since he was the president of the Commercial College at that time. Do not know if he was an outgoing president, or an incoming one. Do not know if he was a high school student at the time, or a college student the following year. Source: (Provo) Daily Enquirer, May 24, 1897. ~ ~ ~ ~

Class of 1897? Wilhelmina Barbara Walker Hinton. Born the third child to a mother who bore eleven children (seven living to maturity) between the 1870’s and 1890’s, Wilhelmina Barbara Walker Hinton — remembered affectionately throughout the Hurricane Valley as “Aunt Mina” — found one of her life’s role models in her aunt, Louisa Rice, who was the midwife for her mother’s deliveries. Originally from Little Spring Valley, Nevada, Mina Hinton was born on October 18, 1873, on a two-hundred acre ranch which her parents, immigrants from Germany and Switzerland, turned into a dairy farm. Once they were able to make headway against the area’s thieves, rustlers, and robbers (as Mina described those who plagued her father’s farm), they were able to sell cheese at eighty cents per pound and butter at seventy-five cents per pound in mining communities such as Pioche, Nevada. Her parents had both converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints upon arrival in America, and in November of 1892, the family moved their family to Hinckley, Utah, in Millard County. Mina attended Brigham Young Academy in Provo until 1897, then returned to teach the first four grades at the district school at Hinckley — that was until Thomas Maurice Hinton of Virgin, Utah, arrived in Hinckley to look for work. They married on October 5, 1898, at which point they moved around Utah and Nevada following the work he had, much of it as a section hand for the Union Pacific Railroad. In 1905, the young Hintons and their three children moved back to Maurice’s native southern Utah home at word of the success of the canals. They spent a year in Virgin, but with water flowing for the first time on the Hurricane Bench, a new town emerged and began to grow — Hurricane. The Hintons made their way to Hurricane where Maurice first built a granary and home for Thomas Isom, and then built a home for his own family at 200 North and 200 West. Mina earned the distinction of being the first woman to live in Hurricane, but that status only lasted a few months, for families arrived in the Hurricane Valley in a flow comparable to the water coming down the canal. In 1920, Hurricane’s Dr. Wilkinson asked Mina to assist him, and her work over the next twenty-four years made her one of the Hurricane Valley’s most celebrated pioneers. A midwife for a recorded 442 deliveries, many of today’s Hurricane Valley residents have Mina Hinton to thank for her assistance at the birth of their parents or grandparents. However, delivering babies was not her only duty. Mina often stayed to help at the home of a new delivery for as long as two weeks until the new mother could reassume the tasks of her household. Mina also cared for the sick throughout those years and was said to have a healing touch. While her work as a midwife and caregiver remains her primary legacy, Mina and Maurice also raised seven children together and Mina was very involved in church callings throughout the decades. Mina loved music, literature, and poetry. She led various choirs in the area, read frequently, and contributed her original poetry for special occasions such as weddings and funerals. Another first attributed to Mina was that she was Hurricane’s first reporter — Mina was the Hurricane correspondent to the Washington County News for many years. Maurice passed away in 1948, but Mina carried on in the Hurricane Valley for more than twenty additional years. She passed away just one week shy of her ninety-fifth birthday, October 10, 1968. The Hinton home Maurice built in 1906 was moved from 200 North and 200 West to its current location at approximately 68 West State Street — the location of the original Isom granary — where it was restored by the Washington County Historical Society. [Hurricane Valley Magazine, Issue 9, By Julie Fiducia Hunter]