Central U.S. History teacher Scott Wilson and English teacher Marcella Mahoney led the creation of a banner for Team Crandell above lockers on the third side of the second floor and are “using it as a way to extend and celebrate the team’s namesake,” Wilson said.
Central has four freshman teams, all named after an esteemed Central graduate and Hall of Fame inductee – one of which is named after Marion Crandell. Many of the students on Team Crandell know her story, yet this banner has compelled teachers on Team Crandell to let her story be known by all of Central because not only “does it fit into our World War I curriculum, [but] the more you learn about her, the more you find her as an interesting person,” Wilson said. “Her story is simply one worth telling.”
The Crandell banner will be an addition to the artwork around Central. Something many Central students don’t know is that around the halls, toward the ceiling, there is artwork that has been there since the building was built.
Crandell has been a name known around Central High for years, yet many do not know her story. Crandell was the first American woman to die on the World War I front. Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but raised in Omaha, Crandell was a part of one of the first graduating classes from Omaha High School.
She went on to study French at Sorbonne University and received her teaching certification from the University of Colorado. Crandell was a French teacher at a small, all-girls school in Davenport, Iowa, when the war broke out.
She would later volunteer through the YMCA to go over to France “simply because she loved the French people,” Scott Wilson said in an interview with PBS. Crandell would go overseas and serve as the sense of comfort that soldiers needed on the front. Whether that was hot chocolate or lemonade, the women were there.
It was in the spring of 1918 when Crandell was in a German offensive, evacuating her team from their hut, when a German artillery shell came in, detonated, and fatally wounded her. She was taken to a nearby hospital, where she died a few hours later.
Crandell was given a soldier’s burial at the Sainte-Menehould and was the first woman to be buried in the cemetery of 6,000 French soldiers. Her body was later moved to where it rests now at the Meuse Argonne Cemetary in northern France, which is the largest American cemetery in Europe.
“Nobody is going to write our story for us, so we have to be the ones who are the torchbearers of Central’s history,” Wilson said.
When deciding on what the banner was going to look like, Wilson worked with Central librarian Beth Wilson. “He gave me a general idea of what he and Mrs. Mahoney were going for – they wanted to include some of the familiar photos and artifacts we relate to Marion Crandell, the team logo that we designed together a couple of years ago, and poppies,” Beth Wilson said.
The banner will consist of elements such as poppies, which are the symbol of World War I and are on the Crandell team logo, the original Omaha High School building, the picture of the plaque from the WWI memorial here at Central, images of what YMCA volunteer women did at the war front, a newspaper clipping from the Central Register archives, and a picture of the Central WWI service flag, along with pictures of Crandell.
“I love that I will be able to walk outside of 234 and see Marion Crandell, but I am more excited for future students even after I am retired [who] will be curious about the history of Marion Crandell,” Wilson said.
