Boston College - Sub Turri Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Cashman, McEntee, Cavan, Cancelliere O la 5 5 rtld ton ¥ It was one of those gray, misty, typically Boston days and you found yourself walking across Boston Common with nothing much in particular to do. So you were coming to the end of your college career. You had almost finished what tradition told you were supposed to be the best and happiest days of your youth. Well, they were, weren ' t they? Hadn ' t you found out that B.C. had snuggled into its own corner of your heart ? You know, sometimes it ' s lots of fun just to reminisce, to wander back over the years spent at the Heights. Then you are surprised to see how vividly you recall the little things that made a college something more, that made it really Alma Mater. There was your Freshman year when you were one of the members in that largest of classes ever to enroll at Boston College in September, 1941. After a week ' s orientation, you started the ac ademic year with the Mass of the Holy Ghost. Then came your first formal classes in college. You wandered around the Gothic-studded campus in bewildered, traditionally gullible amazement. What was it all going to be like? Well, you soon found out it wasn ' t going to be all orientation. Your high school minds were shocked at first by confusing titles of text books

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are r!? Five hundred strong, the Class of 1945 began its career at Boston College with its first Mass of the Holy Ghost in September, 1941. Week after week of class fled into eternity as Forty-Five ' s educa- tion in the arts and sciences progressed. December 7, 1941, came to break the tradition. Singly and in groups, the men of Forty-Five left the College, interrupting their education to go where glory awaited them on the battlefronts of the war. As the long-expected day of graduation approached — eleven months prematurely — twenty-eight of the original five hundred remained to receive degrees. These represent the thin line of Forty-Fivers on the home front who have kept the scholastic tradi- tion of Forty-Five alive.

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given you by your professors, such frightening tomes as Horace ' s Ars Poetica or the works of Demosthenes. Yes, it looked as though you ' d have to buckle down and become the grind you ' d always threatened to be but somehow never quite became. Your interest in college life was supple- mented by extra-curricula activities — debating, Stylus, Heights, the Academies, the Sodalities, and many, many others. But this was the time of year for football and you went to Fenway Park to watch Denny Meyers put the team through the T formation in a manner that brought praise and admiration to a team that, if not great, at least showed that next year — well, the other fellows would soon know the answer to that. Your own Freshman team showed the stuff it was made of, too, and beat St. John ' s Prep with a convincing score. After the game there were movies in the auditorium and the Freshman banquet in T-100 at which the humor of Swede Nelson provided food for conversation for many a day following in the cafeteria. And, say, what about those hectic, bustling lunch periods at the caf when you didn ' t know whose lunch you were eating but were too busy arguing or debating to care? You also thought of those horrible exam weeks and just lived to see the day your last quarterly was finished safely (you hoped). Who were the fellows you chose for class officers? Oh sure. You remembered Ed. Mc- Mahon, your President, and Francis Duggan, the Vice-President, with Arthur Quilty and Bill Gartland as Treasurer and Secretary. Weren ' t those campaigns a panic though? After football season came December and winter and Pearl Harbor. But you got over the initial shock and decided to work even harder to make it tough for those Japs when you had to go. December also brought with it the Christmas vacation which looked like heaven from where you stood. But, as with every rose there are thorns, you had a thesis to do over your rest period. Can ' t let the old bean get rusty you know. Small danger of that ! January began a new year and your second semester. But there was a change. The college was now on an accelerated program and your Freshman year was to close in April. The phrase c ' est la guerre was in vogue everywhere and nowhere more appropriately than at the Heights. Vacation in the usual manner was out. hnRWfl(l The winter months melted into early spring and found you studying away for Finals. One week of hell which was topped off by a brief glimpse of Paradise. You took your glamour girl of the moment to the Georgian Room of the Statler for your Freshman dance. Well, you were through with Frosh — one quarter of your college career completed and you were still asking for more. What sort of answer would your Sophomore year give you? SOPHOMORE The Freshman year ended, you stepped right into your Sophomore year at the Heights in May, 1942. The brief vacation was variously spent work- ing, semi-working, or just loafing. So once more on the first week of September, you trudged back up the hill from Lake St. and saw again the Heights. Their Gothic spires did something to you in spite of the fact that you were now a college man and not supposed to be soft or sen- timental. The old catch in your throat was there no matter how hard you tried to get rid of it ; did you really want to, after all ? A general shaking of familiar sun-tanned hands, fewer, true, than were there in June, and a bobbing of heads just regaining their hair after summer butches — all crowded toward the