"This mural was originally on the 2nd floor of the Central Grammar School, situated between two doors and bracketed by infant figures with shields saying Gloucester High School above each door. The thirty-eight figures are almost all portraits of students in the 1935 graduating class.

Winter divided the mural between the arts and humanities on the left, including geometry, typewriting, lathe-working and music, and the sciences on the right, including geometry, biology, and chemistry. The figure of Alma Mater – the words mean “nourishing mother” in Latin and were used for both a mother goddess in ancient Rome and for the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages -- is in the middle giving diplomas. Beside her are the lamps of learning, and silhouetted in the sky behind her is the Tree of Knowledge. Gloucester High School is in the distance, as well as colleges and observatories. The high color and rhythmic composition are characteristic of Winter’s murals in this building.

The following (from a 1935 article in the Gloucester Daily Times) is a key to the figures in the mural:
Allen J. Sutherland (1934-5 cadet colonel) receives his diploma. Dana W. Hull, C. Theodore Ryan, T. Wesley Morris, Robert N. Lundberg, Arthur A. Smith, Robert O. Parsons, Francis F. Munroe, Donald F. McQuarrie, Theodore “Teddy” Williams, (studying chemistry), Gardner W. Homes (football helmet -- Captain of 1934-5 football team), Paul Clark (with microscope), Charles R. McLoud (studying geometry). Priscilla B. Wonson, Mary Alice Cameron, Priscilla A. Smith, Priscilla D. Gorman, S. Elizabeth Johnson and Martha V. Tischoff (representing dressmaking), Barbara J. McEwen (at typewriter), Evelyn G. Douglass (playing a violin). L. Daniel Runkle (playing a clarinet), F. Harrison Poole (with a crystal). Laurence Fredrickson, Harold G. Geary, Jr., Robert E. Londergon, John B. Bradley, Ralph B. Herrick, Jr. (all in ROTC uniforms). Eleanor M. Gorman, Elizabeth A. Gibson, Betty Johnson, (daughter of Principal Leslie O. Johnson), Jeanette Stevens, Clarissa E. Kerr, Eunic W. Wonson, Mary Alice Cowing (chewing on pencil), Mary W. Wright, Florence L. Smith (? meditatively on a geographical ?). Mrs. Fletcher Flynn of Lynn (student of A.B. Winter) posed as the model for Alma Mater."