Chicora College for Women - Nods and Becks Yearbook (Columbia, SC)

Page 10 text:

But growth permeated too much of college life this year for us to push it completely from our minds. One hundred more freshmen this year . . . the promise of another hundred next year. Upperclassmen felt a long-latent awareness of the small and friendly campus and suddenly wondered just what all the new students and faculty and facilities would mean. Every step toward an impersonal replacement of Old Queens was painfully present in our thoughts: eating in shifts in the dining hall, seeing fewer empty classroom seats, waiting in large groups to withdraw money from the bank. We often talked about this expansion; it worried us. We clutched tightly to our tradition and hoped that our gain would outweigh our loss. Page Six

Page 9 text:

At last it did. The puddles shrank and finally seeped entirely into the ground. A weaker fall sun beamed on our faded-tan faces and made us squint. New trees were planted, young trees that needed taut cord supports in order to root and grow. Growth . . . how this year meant growth for Queens. Albright ... a red-orange, growing skeleton across the street . . . plans forming to remove the secure old house near the corner of Selwyn and Wellesley and to erect a mammoth auditorium in its place. We noticed at first the pipes and spaded ground of con- struction, but it was not long before we shut these from our sight. We became so used to seeing the action of growth that we almost ignored it. Page Five

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Johnson! Goldvvatcr! We thrust ourselves into the rally spirit and the characteristically controversial campaign. We talked about it in our rooms and wrote about it in our letters; yes, we argued, too. Mock election ... a “whistle- stop’’ tour ... a can of Gold Water, an LBJ hat ... a remark subtly slipped into a class lecture ... a bumper sticker high on a mirror. By the first of November it was all over. We sighed, from relief or from disappointment or from resignation, and went about our business. But not long afterward our aliveness was reinforced. Sunday, November 22, 1964: after one year’s loss. 1 he assassination of Kennedy—had it really happened? How evasive and long-past it all was, yet how clearly we still heard the martial music and the clicking rifles and the military footsteps. That Sunday was a reflective day. We saw beyond ourselves and Queens College, and we saw a death-livened present—for a while, at least. Page Seven d