Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

Page 10 text:

Houghton Library, housing Harvard's rare books, was finished during our freshman year. The new calisthenics program was practically painless, we were required to take only one more hour a week at our favorite sport. Most of the officer candidate plans meant little to us at the time, and the spring was uneventful. As they had been for years, our big events were the Smoker and the jubilee. There was much assorted talent at the Smoker, and Jinx Falkenburg, whose talent was obvious. A riot was im- possible because of the rainy weather, but a stampede on the beer keg after the show satisfied the urge for self-expression. We all got into Houses which was not much of a sur- prise to us. Thejubilee, held a week after the Smoker, brought girls from all over the east for the freshman's big night, and our undefeated crew, stroked by Orrin Wood, acquired the reputation of being, next to the varsity, the fastest crew in the CASE. Taking exams in stride, or at least more so than inlan- uary, we went home for our three-week vacation at the be- ginning ofjune as the Crimson crews swept the Housatonic. Unfazed by rumors of heat, humidity and mosquitoes, '45 intent on getting a degree before Uncle Sam got them, came back almost to a man., The Harvard ofjuly lst, was not the Harvard of exam period. The formerly cloistered walks of the Yard now swarmed with women students of all 7 10 types, from the traditional Midwestern high school teachers to the sweater girls of the big Eastern culture factories. They sprawled on the grass and on the steps of Widener, played havoc with studious concentration in Boylston and Widener, and perked up attendance at lectures no end. Other new- comers were some 1500 military trainees, mostly naval officers who moved in on the northern part of the Yard. As they marched back and forth to the sound of music and announce- ments from a loudspeaker in Thayer, or asked us how to get to the Union, we knew that the southern accent had arrived for the duration. The highly complicated organization of the summer school was a set-up for us. The two courses we were taking hve times a week for four half-courses credits, somehow never seemed like more than half of a regular program, and no Saturday classes made weekends at the Cape and up north possible. Best of all, the unexpected presence of screens which the University managed to hustle from the WPB kept the mosquitoes in their place. In the middle of August we accommodated ourselves to a one-day examination period. The second half of the session saw the 1000 women reduced to less than 400, and the further southward advance of the Navy which took over the now vacant Grays and Weld. The armed forces were increased by a Chaplains' School which arrived with attendant publicity and disappeared into remote Andover Hall and the Germanic Museum. Intellectuals, bruised in body and mind by the calisthenics and compulsory drilling of the Physical Education program, found something to cheer in the Robeson- Webster Othello given its first performance in Brattle Hall. This must have seemed the one bright spot in a cultural vacuum as the Advocate siestaed through the summer and the Dramatic Club dealt art a heavy blow by producing Dracula in medi- eval Sanders theatre. As the weather cooled, the sleepy life of summer school began to pick up. The football team started its practice and exams, as usual, caught us unawares in September. Looking back on it, summer school seemed like a vacation with two-course credits, a pleasant if unproductive period. But there was a violently dissident minority who claimed that standing over a hot Bunsen burner Eve days a week in daily labs was hardly an ideal vacation. X, The regular college year of 1942-45 was to be a big one for '45. It was in these two semesters that many of us were to crowd our sophomore, junior and senior years. The class broke up into groups and cliques and types began to emerge, the aesthete, the dilettante, the club man, the joy boy, the activities man, the politician, the Phi Beta Kappa man and the grind. But the vast majority of us, as in other classes, were somewhere in between these types, the average Harvard man rather than the non-existent typical Harvard man.

Page 9 text:

This new life began with a Hurry of activity after the beginning of hostilities, the ARP held an air-raid rehearsal, blood donors flocked to the Red Cross, and rumors that the drart age was being lowered to 18 began going round. There was no immediate reason why it shouldn't, but everyone seemed surprised that'college life went on almost as usual. We looked forward to the Christmas vacation, and tried to figure out schemes to get away before our last scheduled college exercise, and some Adams House men formed a societyeto save the Mole a character threatened with ex- tinction at the hands of Dick Tracy. The best freshman hockey team in years started its season, and the '45 basketball team was beginning to score 60 or 70 points a game. After the Christmas dinner most of us crowded into the undersized common room of the Union and heard Copey read from Kip- ling, Benchley and Dickens. Back from Christmas vacation, we regretted leaving our books in Cambridge with exams only two weeks away. The University voted war certificates for anyone finishing a year's work and the college went on a 12-month schedule with an expanded, 12-week summer school, which the Faculty volunteered to teach for nothing. The last two weeks ofjanuary were a special kind of hell for the freshmen, unused to the sustained effort of a two-week exam period. After it was over, we were more than ready to take the C1'im5on'.f advice and get away some- place where the name of Harvard was unknown. Unfortunate- ly we only had a weekend but we made the most of it. The new term saw the draft age lowered to 20, accel- erated courses injapanese and Russian, talk of a compulsory athletic program, seven new freshmen and charges for seconds at the Union. This last was a cruel blow, for Union food had been at least plentiful. All in all, though, Harvard was pretty much the same, and no sudden and drastic changes were to occur for a long time. December 8, 1941-President Conant pledges Harvard's re- sources to the war effort. The rest of the winter was dull, the weather was foul and boredom became a thing to contend with. Our worries about getting into Houses were lessened when the University announced that all students would hereafter have to live in the Houses. On February 28th, the Houghton Library was opened giving freshmen a chance to see what they had been passing six times a day since September, and on March 6th, we had our hrst blackout, perfect except for the Tilt sign on Mike's pin-ball machine. The Freshman Frolic livened at least one cold, slushy Saturday night. The new air-raid siren atop Widener, installed in january 1942, brought war close to the Yard.

Page 11 text:

These same two semesters were to see the last of peacetime Harvard, it was Culture's last stand. Eight hundred and sixty of us returned in October, 1942, about as many as the usual sophomore class, by july less than one- quarter of that number were still in college. The Harvard of freshman year and the summer school were relatively unaffected by the war, but we were now in a period of adjustment to the demands of Washington. For the University this meant anxious waiting for directives and frantic attempts to comply with them. For us it meant less and less freedom, and even more anxious waiting for our fu- ture to be decided by Selective Service and Army and Navy ollicialdom. There were varied reactions to these changed condi- tions. Frantic acceleration and changing of programs was the answer for the lucky few who found that the war coincided with their plans for a career, or who were willing to adjust themselves to the changed conditions. A few impatient ones enlisted, but a large majority were willing to yield to inertia and waited for the Draft Board to solve their problems. Even this last group was split, some worked on with the long view in mind ffinishing college after the war and going on as plannedj and others just let things take care of themselves. The term began even before registration with a football game. A green Harvard team with a large '45 representation fthe Fishers, Don Richards, Charley Gudaitis, Sid Smith and Pete Garlandj lost to star-studded North Carolina Pre- Flight School, 13-O, continuing the old Crimson tradition of losing the Hrst few games. Registration on the following The Soldiers Field front: marching and calisthenics. S Studying al fresco during the first Summer Session. Monday was a far cry from the frantic freshman rush of a year before. Few tried to sign up at 9.00, we nonchalantly waved aside the laundry, cleaning and magazine salesmen or else sold the merchandise ourselves to gullible newcomers. The accelerated schedules with five or six courses and tutorial seemed to leave little time for fooling and there were more good resolutions than usual. Soon after the Penn game, falso lost, the V-1 and ERC, Navy and Army college plans, were announced, and the mad scrambling to fit study programs to changing Washington directives began. Paths were beaten to Little Hall, where the harassed Dr. Perkins became to many the best-known man on the faculty. As the fall wore on and the unlucky football team became the gamest Harvard team in years,'l conditions which would have seemed impossible a few months before, became almost normal. Even individu- ality-destroying calisthenics was officially made a permanent institution and taken in stride. The Deanls office, war-profiteering on its own, seized upon the national emergency to strike a blow against student liberties, and issued anti-cutting regulations. The Student Council and the Crimron objected strenuously, ,but University Hall took off the velvet gloves and passed some half-hearted resolution anyway. Most professors, too busy to keep attendance, ignored it, and so the matter rested. The ERC and V-1 got many new customers when the 18-year-old draft bill entered Congress just before the Dartmouth game.