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

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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

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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

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Christmas came with cold, clear nights that made us look up at the haze-circled moon and wonder at its being and at our own. This time of year, perhaps, we felt the closest to each other. The Yule Log Ceremony first ushered in our Christmas spirit, a binding sort of spirit. We saw and heard and felt the same: familiar faces lighted by the popping bonfire and by small candles that quietly and unnoticed dripped red wax on gloved hands; hot wassail that seared the tips of our tongues; rounded mouths that caroled winter smoke which blended with the windy swirls of smoke from the Yule log; a high child-voice that spoke, “Oh, fire, burn away all evil!” A Peanut's circe in a knee- sock stocking . . . the clean, pine smell of the ornamented tree in Burwell . . . Christmas chimes peeling from the bright church steeple on Selwyn. We especially noticed the small things then, and we noticed each other. Page Eight