Wake Forest University - Howler Yearbook (Winston Salem, NC)

Page 17 text:

5%£ Sio u otftAe FALL AT WAKE FOREST COLLEGE FALL . . . AND RAILROAD AND BUS STATIONS CROWDED WITH BAGGAGE . . . REUNIONS WITH OLD FRIENDS . . . BAFFLED FRESHMEN DASHING FROM HOUSE TO HOUSE DURING RUSH WEEK . . . NEW STUDENTS AND -WHEELS SIPPING COKES IN THE BOOKSTORE . . . THE LONG LINES AT REGISTRATION . . . FRIDAY NIGHT PEP RALLIES AND THE SNAKE DANCES THROUGH CAMPUS . . . THE CROWDED BUSES GOING TO RALEIGH . . . HOARSE VOICES AFTER EVERY FOOTBALL GAME . . . PILES OF BURNING LEAVES . . . HOMECOMING AND THE HOMECOMING DANCE . . . OPEN HOUSES AFTER FOOTBALL GAMES . . . THE HAY- RIDES TO LAKE MURL . . . THANKSGIVING VACATION COMES AND GOES . . . THE FRATERNITY FORMALS . . . THE CHRISTMAS GLEE CLUB CONCERT . . . CAROLING AROUND THE CAMPUS . . . WINTER APPROACHES . . . EXAMS . . . AND CHRISTMAS VACATION. HE STORY of a year at Wake Forest is always a vivid one to those who have lived it and enlivened it. To some it is a dramatic tale to be often and glow- ingly retold; to others, a laughable yarn, a series of cherished anecdotes. There are few who remem- ber it with bitterness; more, perhaps, who laugh evasively at its mention. But without exception it is a story remembered, clinging to our memories like an unforgotten face. This year ' s narrative is perhaps less character- ized by drama than realism, but we will respond no less to its telling in the chapters ahead, for we all lived it, laughed it — and we remember it. That we may reminisce more eloquently — SUMMER ' S WARM NARRATIVE Long before that bustling September week when transportation terminals bulged with campus - bound collegians, our tale began its unfolding under the heat of a summer sun, and found expression in the intense warmth of a lecture room, during the long afternoon hours of a physics lab. in the prolonged bridge sessions of the dorms. Summer school is more than a mere appendage to the fall and spring terms; it is the vital com- mencement of a new year of college life. Those about whom the story is first concerned are the determined veterans who are making up for time lost and the transfer co-eds who attend classes between swimming pool dates, the pre-meds strug- gling to complete requirements before the fall finds them at med school and the part-time stu- dents who are working their way through. They are the Wake Foresters to whom the last of May does not mean the end of classes and the begin- ning of house parties at the beach. It is with these, then, that we open our narrative — From Maine to New Mexico and Florida to Washington, trailers, huts, and discharged Army barracks invaded the campuses of the nation ' s colleges and universities and formed themselves into compact little communities — G. I. Towns, they were called. Living in these trailers and huts were veterans who had turned from the busi- ness of war to the profession of a higher education. Some lived with their families — and there was a mixture of Tennyson and diapers, the Missouri Compro- mise and clothes pins, logarithms and the aroma of broiled chops, test tubes and cold cream. Some lived as bachelors, sharing ex- penses jointly — and Paradise

Page 16 text:

SOCIAL SCIENCE BUILDING 12

Page 18 text:

Lost was mingled with the Ace of Spades, paral- lelograms with a battered chess board, silver nitrate with midnight coffee boiling over a small hotplate. Some just lived, sharing nothing with nobody. But they all lived and studied and planned and worked toward a well-outlined future. Wake Forest was not left behind in this great adventure. The acute housing shortage was tackled by energetic veterans and understanding school officials, with the result that plans were made to permit married veterans to erect surplus army barracks for apartments. During the sum- mer, the college property across from the heating plant and the lots surrounding the tennis courts were given to the cause of Wake Forest ' s own G. I. Town. But problems were not so satisfactorily solved for everyone. There was the Gopher ' s Club, an organization of men who had no place to live. Since they wanted an education, however, they slept in the basement of the new chapel on bunks supplied by the War Assets Administration. A great number of them were veterans — thus the W.A.A. assistance. The first four men to arrive in the lower depths of the new chapel decided to form the organization which came to be known universally as The Gopher ' s Club — boys without rooms, without hot showers, but with double- decker bunks and a limited amount of living space. Back during the good old days of the OPA the Wake Forest meat markets didn ' t have much trouble setting their prices. Washington did it for them. But there came the death of the OPA, and Wake Forest business establishments held the destiny of local pantries in their hands. There came a two-dollar per barrel increase in flour, and we looked longingly toward the corn- fields; there came an eleven cents increase in the price of butter, and we thought respectfully of Grandma and her cow and the screened-in back- porch with the butter churn over in the corner; and there came a 20 per cent increase in meat prices at Miss Jo Williams ' cafeteria, and we sud- denly respected the theories of the vegetarians. But conditions like these were forgotten in mid- July when more than two hundred fraternity men and their dates attended the semi-formal Pan- Hellenic Summer Dance in the Virginia Dare Ball- room of Raleigh ' s Hotel Sir Walter. Most of the same number had swung a leg or two in the Com- munity House the night before at the nickelodeon dance which initiated the gay week-end. Back from the dances and in a more serious frame of mind, the student body settled down to the urgent task of alleviating as much as possible the acute famine conditions over the globe. The executive committee of the college World Relief Fund, under the capable guidance of Elwood Orr, made plans to canvass the student body for con- tributions toward this great relief task of feeding the world — or at least a studious portion of it. The campaign was stimulated by chapel programs and campus posters and front page stories in the Old Gold and Black. And it proved to be a big success — $2,500 worth of success. Wake Forest College and North Carolina Bap- tists were given the chance of a lifetime and took it, wisely and overwhelmingly. The chance came in the form of an endowment fund gift from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation of Winston-Salem. The Reynolds ' offer was made with the provision that the college be moved to Winston-Salem within five to eight years and that the North Carolina Baptists raise an estimated four million dollars needed for the erection of a new plant that will cost around six million dollars. Another gift from the Winston-Salem family was the offer of the Twin City ' s most scenic estate, Reynolda, by Mrs. Mary Babcock, one of the trustees of the Reynolds Foundation. —