Eckerd College - Logos Yearbook (St Petersburg, FL)

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September 2, 1960, was the Big Day. On that day, with Convocation and many high- sounding words, the business of living out the founding of a college began; the years of planning drew to a close. It was the beginning of the difficult road to reconciliation between ideals and realities. We hadn ' t quite settled into our quarters when we had a visitor who sent the men scrambling to vacant rooms in the concrete Main Building. Hurricane Donna, with 125 mile-per-hour winds, roared up the coast, but passed to the east of Tampa Bay. For us, her passing was a two-day party with T.V., Miss Edna Blumenthal ' s inevitable pop-corn. Col. Garner, and a Hurricane Hop. Others, in Central Florida, were less fortunate. But aside from Donna, September passed into October without much disturbance of our now-familiar routine of classes, studies, bull sessions, cuts (of all kinds), coffee, so-so food, and the thud-thud-thud of the pile driver from eight in the morning until five at night with the roar of diesel pumps during the balance of the day. The city was building a new sea wall for the Base. If Donna had been severe, she was nothing compared to the storm which broke on our academic heads with mid-term examinations in mid-October. Fifty per-cent of us come out of that trial with one or more unsatisfactory grades. The picnic was over. The confidence of founding a college was shaken. There was nervous talk of scholarships and how to study. Worry, fear, and depression became common. Not even the calisthenic antics of Mr. Baker and his choir. Miss Blumenthal ' s pop-corn, or hundreds of counseling sessions at all hours with everyone from the Base ' s night watchman to Dr. Bevan were able to stem the breakdown of our morale. As Thanksgiving drew near, there was open talk of not returning in January. Then we went home for a long weekend. And after home cooking and some good doses of parental confidence mixed with scolding, we came back. The world wasn ' t quite so black anymore. Our pre-exam Christmas presents were many. We had our first Formal, the choir gave its first concert, the Trident published its first issue, and the basketball team that we ' d rallied around in the dark days of November as a morale booster, brought home the bacon in two straight wins. The St. Petersburg Times noted that a fellow named Rich Miller would certainly go down in the school ' s history as he scored twenty-eight points. The HMS Ulster, visiting our harbor, was sporting enough to accept our challenge to a whaleboat race. We lost, but gained an oar as our first trophy. But best of all was the news the Trident carried as its first headline: FEW DISMISSALS DUE AT SEMESTER END-BEVAN. Persons [he said] who have shown an Interest In the school through regular prepara- tion of assignments, attitude, and compliance with regulations, should not feel In danger of expulsion because of one or more unsatisfactory reports. ' ' Buoyed up with hard work, and all our pre-Christmas presents, we went to the mark again, and did much better than we had two months earlier. That crisis was over. So, too, was our first semester. January and the first mId-Wlnter arrived. The pressures of 8:00 classes and final exams were over. Most of us were back, breathing somewhat easier becouse we had mode It through all or part of our first semester courses. Now we had time

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began on the Maritime Base. In March, Perkins and Will of Chicago and Connell, Pierce, Garland, and Friedman of Miami were named architects from among seventy-five firms considered. The President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhov er, v as made our first Charter Alumnus on April 22, 1959, by Dr. Kadel and Congressman William Cramer. Three days later, Mr. and Mrs. William Luther Cobb, of St. Petersburg, announced that they would sponsor the erection of the Library. Mr. Al Long, of baseball fame, donated $200,000 for scholarships in May. In September, Dr. Pratt announced the Mid-Winter Semester, a three-week program of concentrated study. In October, Brinson-Allen Construction Com- pany of Tampa began to clear the New Campus as their contribution to the College ' s establishment campaign. Between that September (1959) and the moment we began arriving for registration the next, Drs. Bevan and Kadel chose our Founding Faculty, while Dr. J. Thomas West went to work recruiting the Founding Freshmen. Dr. I. G. Foster, Dr. A. H. Carter, Dr. John Dixon, Dr. George Reid, Mr. John Satterfield, Dr. Everett Emerson, Dr. William C. Wilbur, Dr. Dexter Squibb, Dr. Pedro Trakas, Dr. Billy Wireman, Dr. Robert Meacham, Mr. Robert Hall, Dr. Ashley Johnson, Dr. Kenneth Keeton, Miss Florence Sherbourne, Miss Betty Crane, Dr. Dennis Anderson, Dr. Louis Guenther, Dr. Jack Wilson, Mr. Guy Owen Baker, Mrs. Francis Witaker and Dr. Clark Bouwman were Dr. Kadel and Dr. Bevan ' s flock. Dr. West and lots of scholarships charmed 152 of us to the little, concrete, peninsular world. • • • The Year of Beginning 1960-61 In our Pre-College Conferences that summer, we imbibed the heady brew of the break with tradition, the new start, and building (or founding) a College. In our naivete we came to believe that there was little we could not do. As if to prove it, we sat up one night and made a class flag with our emblem on it. Uca Pugnax, the Fiddler Crab, was, we were told, the first inhabitant of the New Campus. Since we were to share that honor with him, the College gave us each a small gold pin with his facsimile on it. In our conferences, we discussed standards of student life and matters of high policy. It was our first encounter with our mentors, the men and women who inhabited the offices of our beloved, if rebelled against, faculty and administration. Together, we formulated the basic guide lines of our collegiate existence. TOPICS TO BE COVERED: What publications should be started at the college? How would you structure o Student government? What responsibilities should it have? What major and minor sports should the college undertake? Are you in favor of an intercollegiate program? Should chapel service be compulsory? Should class attend- ance be compulsory? Do you approve of an honor system of conduct? If so, into what areas should it extend? Do you approve of the conventional grading system? Would you like to see grades and working for grades de-emphasized? What sys- tem would you suggest? What social functions and activities would you desire on campus? What sort of attire (dress) [sic] would you consider appropriate for men and women? Should there be any restriction on smoking? What should be the pol- icy on drinking? Should students be allowed to have cars on campus? Should there be curfews for students? Could you formulate an image of what a Founding Fresh- man at Florida Presbyterian College should be?

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10 to think, to write, to be inspired for creativity, to be independent. So, the mid- Winter groups met, the professors said Come and see me thirty days from now with the results of your study. You ' re on your own. Thirty days seemed lil e such a long time to write one paper. Surely there were enough hours in the day to sleep until noon, go to the Snack Bar dances every night, cheer loudly at basketball games, indulge in long bull sessions about what is truth? or what do you think about so-and-so? There were none of those long science labs or W.C. discussion groups or language labs— just twenty-four hours a day to be creative. This was the ideal, but by the third week in January, most of us found ourselves frantically trying to find books to back up any vague generalizations we had managed to think of in three weeks. We found that days without classes, just like the busy ones from first semester, simply were not long enough. Where had the thirty days gone? And why was it so hard to be independent without some prod- ding from W.C. discussion leaders? So the typewriters were brought out and used steadily the last week of January. We found that the 500 word W.C. papers which had taken nine hours first semester to write were nothing compared to a ten- or twenty-page research paper. Sleepy-eyed, Floundering Freshmen coming back from the doughnut shop prepared to stay up all night in order to finish what was supposed to reflect a month of independent study. And we looked forward to classes again and the persuasion of professors. Most of us made many resolutions never to get behind again. ' That is what January seemed like to our eyes. In reality, we did a lot of work, and fairly steadily. Everyone, including ourselves, was impressed by our performance. Second semester opened on a note of hope despite a few wisps of weariness and frus- tration. The basketball team had a 4—3 record which it stretched to a 6—3 for the season. Social events showed promise of a new gaiety in our off-campus hideaway, the Ford House. Our new Board of Counselors had set to work to advise college officials on how FPC can reach its goals; help interpret the college to its communities, church, local, and academic; and to lead the public In the financial support of the college. That last was most timely. Not only was the establishment campaign going into Its last phase, but also, our not-so-wise use of electricity had led to what has turned out to be the first annual blackout. Every unnecessary light was turned off. Equally hopeful was the Trident ' s announcement that Elizabeth Woodward had been accepted as the first member of the Class of 1965. As the semester rolled on, we began to watch the weekly notices of students-accepted-and-paylng-thelr-$50 as if they were stock market quotations. In a sense, they were. It ' s a long time from January 2 to April. Even some of the best socials of the year, ships, new students at the March scholarship conference, and the verbal vendettas of the W.C. staff were not enough to stay the slow decay of our morale. Things got bad, but not so bad as in November. If one watched, he would see that the Snack Bar didn ' t really start to fill up until 10:30, there were fewer bull sessions, and a lot more studying. We were learning. For some, beginning to study came too late. Our land for the new campus remained tied up in a fantastic tangle of petty local poli- tics and law suits. Dr. Kadel kept assuring us nonetheless that we would have at least one