The Yearbook
Stephen Mosher
All of the Mosher kids went to the International School of Berne, in a small town called Gümligen some ten or twelve minutes from the center of Berne, one of the most beautiful, wonderful cities a person could ever hope to visit. During the first year we were students there, Mama was concerned that there was no yearbook produced for the students of the school, which ranged from Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade. So My Mam took it upon herself to make me my very own yearbook. It was more of just a photo album, but Mommy always liked scrapbooking (she was a pro) so she crafted the photo album in her best Yearbook manner, writing in the names of students and teachers, what country they were from, what they taught, and I was even able to take it to school to get my friends to sign it, and it was a good way to end my first year in Switzerland and my Freshman year at I.S.B.
But that wasn’t good enough for Mama.
Juana went to the school board, somewhere in that first year at ISB, and she said to them, “If I can raise the money, can we create a yearbook for the school?” and the school board said yes. So, coming into my sophomore year at ISB, there was a yearbook committee, there was a staff, there was a faculty advisor (Mr. Wachs) and there was an advisor, who led the entire project, bringing it in for a landing. That would be My Mam.
Mother was more than just my mother, or Stephanie’s mother, John’s, or Jim’s - at ISB, she was more than just Mrs. Mosher: Juana was Mom. Juana was Mom to all the students at the school. With Jimmy in the lower school, John in the upper school, and Stephanie and I in the High School, Mama became involved in everything about ISB. She helped at track meets, she made costumes for school plays, she made cakes for birthdays, she did book fairs, she did the PTA, she was involved with everything at ISB - Juana Mosher was THE school mom, and a lot of the kids there just said, “Hi, Mom” when she walked in the room.
The school itself was very quaint, very cozy. It was a good operation, built upon what already existed and what had been made. The lower, middle and upper school buildings are what had been made, designed, built, and occupied. The High School was a one-time post office in the small town, it looked like a chalet from the outside, and it consisted of two rooms. One of the rooms had been divided by a rather un-sturdy wall structure so that there was a classroom and a student lounge; the other room was a classroom off of which a slender hallway provided a closet converted to a dark room for the photography class, and water closet (read: toilet). Mr. Wachs had an office off of the lounge. And that was my High School. It was there, in that lounge, that the yearbook staff had all their meetings, where photos were discussed and chosen, where ideas were shared, and where layouts were created. Mama participated in absolutely every aspect of the creation of ODYSSEY. She worked with students to form the layouts, insisting that there be a certain number of color pages in the book and making sure that the artwork of some of the lower and middle school students landed on some of those color pages. The Odyssey yearbook was her passion project for my Sophomore year, and since I was on the yearbook team, I got to spend extra time with Mama, which was food for my soul. After the initial creation of the Odyssey yearbook, the publication continued throughout my final year at ISB - I do not know if it stayed in place after the Moshers left Berne, Switzerland, and the school system there, and I have never asked. I don’t want to think of something that Mama created coming to and end.
One day Mama came to me in my room. She was holding her camera, a 35mm Yashica. She put it in my hands and said, “Here is my camera. Learn to use it. Take it to school and take pictures of everything. It’s for the yearbook.”
I had no interest in photography. I did not know how to use a camera. But if Mommy needed photos for the yearbook, I would learn how. So I did.
It was Juana who put the camera in my hands. It was Juana who chose my future career for me. It was Juana who gave me my passion, my art form, my constant companion for the rest of my days.
Juana Mosher gave ISB Odyssey but she gave me a life.
Juana made me an artist. Nobody else.