Elmhurst College - Elms Yearbook (Elmhurst, IL)

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ON A PICTURESQUE CAMPUS ELMHURST COLLEGE EDUCATES HER YOUTH FOR THE BUILDING OF TOMORROW From huge, grimy cities hot beneath the noonday sun, from little farmhouses sitting alone on an open prairie, from tiny houses on side streets in small towns silent in the flickering of the streetlights and the stars come scores of young men and women to Elmhurst College to seek the desires of their hearts, to find — they know not what. In the shadow of the tower of Old Main they stroll about the campus beneath the elms; they scramble merrily with the autumn leaves to the commons; they hurry across the field to the gym on a windy winter day, they stop on the library steps on warm, spring days to laugh and talk together; they find at every step and turn memories to keep with them always of firm, old, buildings rich with tra- dition, of faces and voices of friends they will alwavs love, of a college life beautiful in both its happiness and sincerity. Keen, young eyes gaze with open wonder at a test tube held up to the open light of day: they search the printed page probing deeply into the questions of the ages; they stare with admiration at the beauties of nature; they pause silently in mute worship and reverence in the stillness of the chapel. Thoughts of the year 1943-44 will bring back memories of events peculiar to it alone. 1943-44. This was the year of the polio epi- demic and the campus quarantine. This was the year the bovs continued leaving, going on to Lancaster, to Eden, or into the unknown; the year the Student Union room was planned and decorated: when every room of Irion Hall was filled and the women outnumbered the men. This was the year when young hearts understood at last that to look into the future is to look into darkness — to look into it bravely is to see the dawn of a new hope. a