Yount-Manion Films - Hockaday Graduation and Rockledge

Duration: 0:14:58

Year Published: 1930s1950s

Sound: silent

Description: This home movie compilation captures the Yount-Manion family at their various estates. The film begins with a young Kathryn Manion at a birthday party outside the Manion household in Beaumont. The film then jumps back in time to show Mildred Yount Manion’s graduation from the Hockaday School in Dallas. The Hockaday School was founded in 1913 and is an independent, secular, college preparatory day and boarding school for girls. As shown in the footage, ceremonial traditions include graduates wearing white dresses and hats as they carry flower bouquets and walk under a long arch of gladiolus. The film concludes with images of Rockledge, a lush summer home enjoyed by the Yount-Manions in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Miles Frank Yount bought the Rockledge house in 1929 from the Heath family and built the Manitou Mineral Spa and the nearby Arcade area. After Yount’s daughter, Mildred, married Edward Manion, the two made the mansion their summer home away from Beaumont. Mildred sold the property in 1969, the same year that she died. Rockledge then turned over to the ownership of George Haggard, who was also president of Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole amusement park in Colorado Springs. The Yount-Manion collection captures extended family members enjoying the facilities at Rockledge as well as Santa’s Workshop. The Yount-Manion Films were given to Lamar University by Greg Riley and Fred McKinley. The pair discovered the films while researching their 2005 book, Black Gold to Bluegrass: From the Oil Fields of Texas to Spindletop Farm of Kentucky, which chronicles the legacy of Frank and Pansy Yount.