Fordham University - Maroon Yearbook (New York, NY)

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ride up the Hudson was a spring highlight, men of '47 danced to the music of Shep Fields at the Senior Ball. But the Golden Age awaited another day. September came and the undergraduates found more gold stars on the chapel flag, you noticed a few more missing faces, and at the Mass of the Holy Ghost, Father Gannon de- livered the eulogy over the coffin of isolation- ism. Recruiting parties for the reserve pro- grams found the undergraduates willing vol- unteers. The Class of '43, aiming at a January graduation, had been in school all summer, and the lower classes were likewise accelerated. The Harvester Dance went on as usual, but the inroads of war became apparent when former Maroon coach jim Crowley started six former Fordham players, members of the North Carolina Naval Pre - Flight squad, against the Ram, in the last game Fordham was to play for four years. However, the court five provided the memory of Fordham's sports' glory, sweeping in to the National Invitation finals at the Garden, there to compete against the country's best. But there were men of '47 facing sterner foes . . . in the sickening suspense of the jun- gle on Guadalcanal . . . in the parching gulleys of Northern Africa. In early 1943 neat little graphs in neat little ollices calmly recorded the loss of over 700 students, Fordham was suddenly struck to the heart. 700 remained in April, 500 in july, as the services called up their reserves. Enlisted men of the ASTP moved onto the campus to study military subjects, imparting newer, harder

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life to halls now almost deserted. Only a bare nucleus remembered the old Fordham ways. The war could not wait for gentler things. Through September . . . October . . . No- vember . . . December . . . campus life went slowly on-a mere echo of better days. By jan- uary, 1944, 330 students were enrolled in the college. The Class of '47 was in attendance elsewhere. But in September of 1944, a new group of lively freshmen caught the baton for '47, em- barking on what was to be an uninterrupted stay at Fordham. October witnessed the grad- uation of 28 men of '45, members of that freshman class of unprecedented size which had entered three years before. It was a mark of the times that the gym, once the sacrosanct domain of Pat Kenneally, became a monster barracks for an Army Postal Battalion. A hint of the future was given in january of '45 when Fordham began the pleasant task of rehabilitating the veteran, as a few for- mer members of the armed forces resumed their education on the campus. The hope for things to come was stimulated by the revival of the basketball and baseball teams in the '44-'45 season. Fordham teams have had bet- ter seasons, but not often better spirit. Expectancy was the mood of the spring of 1945-a tense hopefulness was in the air. In the Ardennes, Von Rundstedt had loosed his last desperate bolt-and missed, Patton was fording the Rhine. The riddled fortress of Europe crumbled and the god-state vanished. As the men of '47 in Europe laid down their arms, their classmates in the Pacific tightened the steel ring of ships about the islands of japan. Then, in one explosive moment in the still air above Hiroshima, the future of our