The Margaret Bright Gallery of Class Dolls

This doll’s dress is lavender net over a long skirt, with flowers at the waist.

Annie Laurie Overton Pomeranz said their dresses came from Jean's and were pink, blue, yellow or lavender.

Amelia Pruitt Nichols dressed this doll in a white knee-length dress with elbow-length sleeves.

Virginia Bailey Harris dressed this doll. She was a home economics major and lab assistant to Jennie Hanyen. Virginia asked the home economics seniors to put some stitches in the dress so they would all have a part. She remembers sitting on her bed and making the dress. Others may have helped, but no one at their 40th reunion could remember.

Mollie Melvin Ward made this doll’s dress with scraps of her own dress. She wrote that all Class Day dresses were not alike, due to World War II. She made a "one-piece dress with eyelet trim on either side of the waist."

The supply of the French Boudoir dolls had been depleted and could not be replenished, due to World War II and its aftermath. The class dolls for three years were “pattern dolls” used by department stores to display dresses. Cornhuskin' begins.

Gwen Krahnke Farrier, a home economics major, dressed the 1946 doll.

Jetta Funderburk Spencer got the doll at the Anchor store in Winston-Salem. Zelma Murray Thomasson was in charge. Joyce Thomas Porter made the dress and Edith Timberlake Knott helped, all this in June Patterson Stallings’ suite. This doll was an advertising doll and wears a girdle and bra, the only doll in the Gallery thus attired! The doll is dressed in a typical style with peplum jacket, but again, the Class Day dresses were not all alike.

1948 marks the return of French Boudoir dolls in the collection. Gayle Wells Powell and Jolene Weathers Edwards dressed this doll.

Maxine Bissette Warren writes: “When we graduated, it was the responsibility of the senior class president to dress the Class Doll. I was class president, and, unfortunately, a very poor seamstress. My mother, Mrs. F.D. Bissette, offered to make the dress. She went with me to buy my white dress for Class Day and then, for the sake of authenticity, she made a dress for the class doll, an exact copy of mine. She dressed the doll and brought it to us at Meredith before Class Day.” Maxine’s mother died in 1983, and Maxine wrote, “She would have enjoyed knowing that the doll collection is still a part of Meredith history.”