Inside this box lies a collection of memories. Inside this box lie the fragments of someone’s life. Here is her sketchbook, her report cards, a notice of someone’s death.

Here is her scrapbook with its bright red cover. The corners are frayed, and the cardboard peels apart. Here is a lock of her hair, a menu from a restaurant that no longer exists, a flier announcing the dedication of the Siuslaw Bridge.

Lean in close. Can you hear it? That rustling noise as you turn the pages. That whisper of sound as you turn the pages. It’s daring you to go back.

To understand this story, you have to be willing to imagine Junction City as it once was instead of what it now is. Open the cover of the 1937 Junco-Ed yearbook. Turn the pages carefully for they are old now and coming apart, the staples having rusted through.

Flip past a poem called “The Heritage” by the student editor of the yearbook. Past the picture of A.H Weber, the principal at the time, his thin lips pressed into a smile.

You reach the pages of the senior class, the last class to graduate from the old Washburne School before it was torn down. Thirty students: bright-eyed, smiling, the guys with ties and suit coats, the girls with bows and big collars and broaches.

Here is Tommy Harper, president of the senior class, young and handsome with his shy smile He knows nothing of the war in which he will soon fight. And Howard Speer, editor of the yearbook, a poet, a football player. He has one eyebrow cocked and is forever young. The thought of being 80-something and spending the last year’s of his life in an assisted living center never crosses his mind.

And here is Geneva Harpole. Her hair is crimped and wavy in the style of the time. Her eyes, mesmerizing, are light with youth and filled with big dreams. Here she is innocent and beautiful and perfect.

Next to her photograph is a list of her high school accomplishments: four years in the honor society, four years in the glee club, two years on the baseball team (the only sport open to girls at the time).

And then, underneath all of her extra-curricular activities is her senior quote: “Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in a woman.”

But, just six years after this photo is taken and these yearbook pages are put together she dies. But she is not the story. She is merely the spark.

Because in January of 2004, more than sixty years after Geneva Harpole’s passing, Greg Osborn, the media specialist at the Junction City High School, finds this box someone donated to the library. He opens it, a faint whisper ever soft and gentle and low escapes. He looks at this collection of memories and wonders who this woman was.