Lowell Technological Institute - Pickout Yearbook (Lowell, MA)

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President 1955 Henry Powell President 1954 Albert Gilet President 1953-52 Piet Bodenhorst

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Mill trip Next stop - Broadway IN RETROSPECT The living of one ' s life is unique. At the instant when tumultuous conditions mold a life, an individual is not able to discern this marked influence on his later years. It is only through the process of retrospection that one can appraise the incidents of the past in the light of the future. And, fortunately for the human race, the process of retrospection makes gay times gayer, and times of strife seem almost innocuous. Gay times gayer, hard times softer . . . how does that apply to four years at L.T.I. ? Let ' s start from the begin- ning . . . It was one of those balmy September days in 1951 when the Class of 1955 first came upon Lowel Textile, as it was known in those days. In entrance, even as in graduation, there were many contrasting opinions about LTI. Those among us who were Ivy League and well traveled didn ' t like what they saw. Some of us were completely innocent of college, and didn ' t know what to expect in the physical appearance of a school. So what if it ' s yellow? . . . Little did both groups realize that during their matriculation at the Institute more new buildings would be erected and more improvements would be made than in any com- parable four year period. We were both awed and frightened by our new surroundings. In solemn ceremony, the Dean (who we were soon to know as the Clean Dean, for some obscure reason) robed in academic gowns, told us to look to the left, and to look to the right. His words didn ' t end with stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight. Instead, he shocked us by saying that one of the men on either side of us would not be there at graduation time. To which we shouted, Who me? Yet he was right . . . alas poor roommates. It was in a gay, carefree, youthfully inexperienced attitude that we stormed the Bookstore. We were loaded up with enough material to give us mementoes of freshman days. Even as we are about to gradu- ate, we have some of our early purchases, unused. We were given the Red Book and the Blue Uniform, and we heard President Lydon ' s famous convocation speech advising us if we didn ' t like it here to go someplace else. Classes were from 8:30 to 4:30 plus four hours on Saturdays, to make up for the additional hours caused by the inclusion of ROTC in the curriculum. As members of the first Corps of Cadets at LTI, we found that those among us who could march became officers, and that those who couldn ' t became disgusted. One heavenly blessing was the rain almost every week during drill hours. The social year was started for the freshmen with a blind date dance held in conjunction with Lowell Teachers . . . Mmmmoan. Then the All-Tex Formal 18